 Good morning and welcome to the 7th meeting of the Education and Culture Committee in 2016. Can I remind everybody present that all electronic devices should be switched off at all times? Our first item is to take evidence on college reforms, focusing on their impact on learners and employers in particular. Can I welcome Annette Brunton, Edinburgh College, Paul Little, City of Glasgow College, Barry McCulloch, Federation of Small Business and Gordon McGinnis, Skills Development Scotland? Good morning and welcome to all of you. Before I move into questions from the rest of the committee, can I start by asking each of you before we get into the specific areas of questioning to give a very short overall view of the benefits that you would have expected would have resulted from the college reform and whether, in fact, they have been delivered, Gordon? Thanks very much. I can probably view it from two sides. I was a board member and chair of Reeg Care College in Paisley through to its merger into West College Scotland and then obviously my role at SDS in terms of the work that we have done with sectoral development. For us, if I reflect back to when we started working in the energy sector, we were having a meeting with the colleges and the renewable sector and we had 41 of the 43 colleges at that time in the room. It was very difficult to then have a strategic conversation with them and develop the sector in that way in terms of how they responded to industry. So, from my point of view, the regionalisation agenda with colleges of bigger scale, the ability of expertise and investment has been a positive development and when I see only developing further as we get stronger work with the industry and in the sectors. In terms of individuals, there is a danger that you can inflate the issues around regionalisation with the budgetary pressures that will face across the public sector. I spend a fair amount of time talking to students in the colleges and across colleges. I am now in the board of Clyde College in Glasgow and the student experience is strong. I do not have any statistical evidence or any fuel for comparing it before and after regionalisation, but the experiences I have are really positive. I was at Ferguson Marine Engineering in Port Glasgow last Friday, and 15 apprentices were undertaken their studies at Clyde College and Clyde Bank campus. Again, they are really positive for the experience, not just from the students but also from their supervisors and instructors. I think that college mergers has been a cultural change to detect that, and that takes a good number of years to work through the system. I do not think that we are quite through there yet, but from my perspective, in certain skills development in Scotland, the regionalisation programme has been a good step forward. From the small business perspective, the benefits that we would expect would be to increase responsiveness to the labour market and enhance employer engagement. If we are being honest, there is still some way to go. It is early, and we should stress that, and not make too many firm conclusions. However, the evidence that we have suggested in the last two years that college leavers are slightly more prepared for work, so there are some early signs that are quite positive. I talked about the three hours, the regionalisation reform and reclassification. I have been reflecting since we, as a sector, faced six hours as a sector and three hours as colleges. Rationalisation of budgets and a number of colleges, regionalisation and reclassification a revamped funding formula, a reintroduction of national marketing and a refocused curriculum. At the same time, internally in colleges, the staff faced restructuring and realignment of cultures. At the City of Glasgow College, we had an additional one, the redefinition of college education. I am sure that some would have felt a deluge of reforms. However, I believe, and we are probably unique in that we are six years in our sixth year past, the merger now and after the reform haven't triably instill a lot of it. I believe that it has been a success, so we are further down the road, as Gordon has alluded to. I think that there are now real benefits beginning to show, not just greater subject choice for the students, not just better articulation opportunities, not just better employment opportunities. Certainly, in our new supercampus, there are new 21st century learning facilities. I think that, in the written paper that I submitted, you can clearly see a huge increase in our performance before the merger, before the reforms, if you will, our colleges in Glasgow, which I represent, were below average. Now, we are not only above average, we are sector leading in that regard. I think that there is a stronger student voice, I think that, as the First Minister saw herself, there is a world-class college sector, particularly in the city of Glasgow now. I think that we have, as a sector, we now have colleges of scale, of influence. We have colleges now with an enhanced reputation. Certainly, in the pace that we carried out much of the reforms, there were bumps and wrinkles, but overall, that has been a success story. It has been a success story for the students, it has been a success story for the sector and, indeed, it has been a success story for the staff. Staff certainly in my college benefit from higher salaries, they benefit from more holidays, they benefit from more promotion opportunities, they benefit from having better working environment. When you look at the overall picture, the college reforms, as challenging as they were, they have delivered for students first and foremost, they have delivered for staff and they have delivered for our college sector. My perspective, looking at what the reforms were intended to deliver and the things that in Edinburgh College we are really working hard to achieve are better choices for students, not necessarily more choices but certainly better choices, more coherence for individual students and groups of students, much, much better pathways. Fundamentally, a completely different relationship between the college, local authorities and employers and the benefit that we can now offer in terms of community planning, both for our young people but also for our local economy. I think that all of those are really good things to deliver. Like Gordon, I am a little bit cautious that we do not mix up whether those reforms have been advanced quicker or slower of themselves without taking into account the economic challenges because there are economic challenges and economic knock-on effects in different regions across Scotland. I am very optimistic about the future of our college and I am more cautious than Paul about how far we are in terms of delivering that. I still think that we have a long way to go in terms of real employer engagement and not just checking things out with employers. We have a long way to go to articulate the learner pathway from S4 to the end of college or university. Although we have made a real start on things such as improving our curriculum offer and improving pathways, I think that there are real challenges for our students in terms of their funding and how easy it is for them to stay at college. Thank you very much to all of you, but I will start with Mary. I will say that, at the outset, when I read the two submissions from Glasgow and Edinburgh, they could not be more different. One was positive, successful, an increase in part-time and full-time higher education, and FE, an increase right across the board. Real benefits are totally positive. To be honest, as a member of the audit committee, I have heard not-so-good words about the FE sector, particularly Cope Bridge recently, but when I read the Glasgow one, I thought that this is wonderful. It is what everyone is looking for. Then I read the Edinburgh one. To be honest, I thought that it was quite depressing. Working hard to achieve a long way to go, all we hear about are the problems and the merger that has been so difficult. My first question is why in our two biggest cities in Scotland can Glasgow, the city of Glasgow College under the leadership of Paul Little, why can so much be done in a positive way to enhance the student experience and allow greater opportunities to move forward? I know your capital bill. I had the pleasure of visiting the Riverside campus recently, convener, and it would be a proud thing for any student or any member of staff to work there. However, why is one so positive and one so negative? That is my first question. We certainly did not set out to write a negative response for the committee. What we sought to do was to try to give a balanced view of where we believe that we are in the college sector. I think that many people are aware of the fact that Edinburgh is in need of a significant transformational change. To come with an over-positive view to this committee would have been unhelpful, because I think that there are things that we still have to do in Edinburgh College, which I think will bring about the kind of transformation that I have set out in my transformation plan for the college. At an individual student level, convener, I believe that the students in Edinburgh College get a very good experience. I think that if you were to look at our student experience, our students would tell you that is a good experience. However, it would be disingenuous of me to come to this committee and say that everything in Edinburgh College is the way I would wish it to be, and I think that we have some way to go on that. You have basically pointed out the difficulties, the challenges, the risks, the meaningful engagement that is variable. If I was a student reading that and deciding whether to go to Edinburgh or Glasgow, it would be a no-brainer. I would be writing that train to Glasgow. I would just like to hear from Paul Little as to why you have managed to overcome the same challenges. Edinburgh has had no different challenges to Glasgow. Why has it been able to overcome them and to move forward? That is a challenging question. I am not going to get into the politics of the two cities. I will avoid that one. You would be very welcome if you came to Glasgow again in that train. At the heart of our change effort, I remember that we are a bit further down the road, is that we kept the students very much at the centre. We have a college purpose statement. We do not have mission statements or vision statements. Those are management jargon. We use a concept of plain English. We talk about our purpose in our way. Our purpose is very simple. It is to let learning flourish. So every single thing that we have done in the reforms and the design of new buildings and the change to our teaching approach and the big emphasis that we have put on performance has been, for one reason and one reason only, to let learning flourish to ensure that every individual student—and there are over 30,000 full and part-time students at City of Glasgow to ensure that every individual student flourishes whatever the background—we have students from BME that, since reforms, their success rates up. We have students who are from a disabled background. Their success rates up. We have students from underrepresented sections. Their success rates up. Our higher education is up 12 per cent or further education, which accounts for about 40 per cent, is up 19 per cent. I think that it is a huge team effort. I think that our board was fully engaged. I think that our management team was very focused on the learner. I think that our staff were not distracted from the core activity that was learning and teaching. I think that that has been enhanced by having a compelling vision of a positive change. We have always seen this as a positive change. We have embraced it as a positive thing. It has not been imposed on us. We have embraced that. I also think that the staff have the opportunity to benefit from, if they like, a next-generation. What reforms are there for Glasgow and City of Glasgow Colleges? Give us a chance to reset our approach. If you had to start all over again, whatever activity you are doing, you will get a chance to think about all your fundamental approaches. We did that. We have a chance to reframe all our priorities. We will reframe them back if you will. We will give the college back to the students and maybe less away from the teachers. That is very interesting, but, fundamentally, you started two years earlier than Edinburgh? Roughly speaking, two years. Is it not fair to say that you have just got a two-year-of-a-head start on some of the other colleges in terms of the process? That is partly the reason why there is a difference. I have seen some of the changes. Clearly, you had some challenges in the early stages of those mergers, but you have now got a world-class facility. I think that we started three years ago because we merged in 2010. I am not going to directly make a comparison with any other college. I think that it is about how we planned that approach and the focus that we put on the outcome of that change process. I hope that, within the fullness of time, all the colleges can see the benefits and flourish from that. Maybe time has helped us. I would like to go on to the reduction in learning activity, which has been well documented over the past few months. From the Audit Scotland reports, we have the cut in reduction in part-time students over £150,000, the cuts to under-16s, which is an SDS issue over £20,000 and a reduction in the over 25 places at college, £74,000. I appreciate that they are not all happening in Glasgow, but in the same Audit Scotland report here, the reduction in Scottish funding council income between 2012 and 2014 was £166 million. That is a huge cut. It is about a third cut to the college sector. A small business is concerned about that. What has happened to the under-16s? The Wood commission was supposed to enhance the experience of under-16s having a day or half a day in college, the vocational experience. For those over 25s, we have focused so much on apprenticeships that we were not allowing that second chance that people like myself got in further education for the over 25s. The cut by £166 million from the Scottish funding council and the huge cuts in part-time under-16s and over 25s. Is the college being allowed to provide the opportunities due to funding, or is the SDS not fulfilling its role in giving opportunities to people? I think that our funding is distinctly different from the Scottish funding council. On that, our modern apprenticeship programme is growing. The relationships with colleges and the delivery of that programme is growing. I do not think that the reduction in activity can be attributed to skills development in that sense. Our main development programmes are working with 20 colleges this year on the development of the foundation apprenticeship model, which we have piloted in five and west loading over the past two years. We will have around 300 young people in the programme this year, with an expectation of 16, 17 and over a thousand young people undertaking foundation apprenticeships, probably with school-colleagues partnerships. It is a really exciting development. The issues that small businesses have come to us about are purely focused on skills and recruitment, so we know that 22 per cent of small businesses in Scotland recruit college leavers, which has been fairly stable over the past few years. When we have discussions with smaller firms, it is on that basis and not on whether colleges are sufficiently resource to deliver what the Government wants them to. At the City of Glasgow College, we are very fortunate in that 60 per cent of our income comes from the funding council and about 40 per cent is non-funding council income. In that period, we have seen a huge increase, something in the region of about 60 per cent, growth in the non-SFC income to compensate for the SFC income. At one stage, we were losing in the region of something like 16 per cent of our grant. We are a college of skill and very entrepreneurial. We could compensate for that. We have an international dimension, which helps. We have very strong links with the business community. We work with between 1,000 to 1,500 businesses. The forms that you talked about, Mary Under, years of age for the students, we have delivered those and are continuing to do that. For example, we work with some of the local schools in Glasgow to provide higher education units in the senior phase. If you will, we are trying to pioneer the approach of a seamless activity from school to college opportunities at college, both at technical, associate and professional, indeed higher professional, right through to university level. For example, we articulate it since the reforms, since merger, well over 7,600 students are articulated from the city of Glasgow College straight to university. However, we also had 1,500 students who stayed at the city of Glasgow College and studied their undergraduate degrees in specialist areas. I think that it is about that partnership with industry. It is about having that provision that is resilient to the funding pressures. Having that entrepreneurial spirit that we inherit and then we further develop allowed us to cushion some of the challenges, but there were challenges and there is no doubt about it. They did complicate the quite significant change of gender. I think that in terms of the areas that Paul has just outlined, such as the international work that we do and the commercial work that we do, that certainly helps to mitigate economic pressures. However, Edinburgh College has worked also with the council to provide more school college places. We are doing a lot more in our academy's work, we are doing the kind of work that is pulling through into higher education. We have a good out turn for our students. 90 per 6 per cent of our students who are able to track go into positive destinations. That element of it is positive. There is definitely a funding pressure on us. Our regional outcome agreement was predicated on a 1 per cent reduction in budget year on year and that money is flowing through to other colleges. There is a difficult unintended consequence around any college that does not recruit in a given year having their funding clawed back in that year because what happens then is that you still have the staffing bill and you still have the overheads but you have a reduction in your budget and that then has a knock-on effect the next year. There are budgetary pressures. There are things that we do to mitigate them, including the international and the commercial work, but the key thing that we are doing at the moment is reviewing and rewriting the curriculum because if the bulk of the demand is coming from students who are coming straight from school and we have a huge demand from students for whom they do not yet, when they are leaving school, have the entry qualifications for some of our courses, we are the only college in the area so it is down to us to write those entry qualifications for them. A big effort that we are making which will help us both financially and serve our communities better are those entry-level courses for students leaving school at 16, 17 or 18. We are doing that to mitigate some of the economic pressures on the college. I will put all the questions into one because not everyone would have to answer this. I would first of all like to ask about national pay bargaining and I just like to let my colleagues see that I brought along re-elect Alec Jones who is delighted about that. His commitment to collective bargaining and the terms and conditions across Scotland, the same terms and conditions for staff across Scotland, so as you can see that is 2011. In 2016, three months out of the election, we still do not have national pay bargaining. I raised that, convener, because, as you know, I was an FE lecturer, but my colleagues in the UHI where I was in Venice, they are paid up to £7,000 lower than college lecturers elsewhere in Scotland, so it is quite a significant disparity. I would like to ask the two princes, Annette Bruton and Paul, where we are on national pay bargaining and when it is going to happen. My second question is on the regional boards. We heard that the Scottish Funding Council was invited to leave the regional board in Glasgow for some reason a week while ago, so I would like to ask Paul Little. Is your success in Glasgow due to the efficiency and effectiveness of the regional board or is your success despite the regional board because I am aware that there is no regional board in Edinburgh? The final question, convener, is probably for everyone. We were also promised that the mergers would bring improvements in the quality of learning. I would just like, particularly from Barry McCulloch, to ask if there has been a significant improvement in the quality and how that is measured. The national pay bargaining is a process, not an event. I think that there is a sign in the shot for five years. In its coming to an end, let's be honest, we have achieved national bargaining for support staff. We have achieved that, which is a huge endeavour. We haven't had national bargaining for goodness nearly 20 years, so to think that we can get it inside x number of months or even over a year is probably not realistic. The challenge of national bargaining requires a team effort between the Scottish Government, the college sector and the trade unions. Scottish Government has to help with transition monies to help that. That is a huge effort that hasn't been forthcoming. There are earnest efforts from the college sector to get the decision-making right. I think that the teaching unions are frustrated that we haven't achieved that. The frustration is probably more to do with the internal mechanisms that we have as colleges to have a robust consultative mechanism that ensures that the boards, as the employers, have a fair say and can shape that. We have made an offer to the teaching unions. We are still locked in intensive discussions. As I said before, we have settled with the support staff. I hope that we can achieve that with the teaching inside the national bargaining, not just the framework but a settlement. It requires that team effort, the Scottish Government, the colleges and the trade unions to take a realistic approach. As for the regional board, I think that we are now over two years in Glasgow with the regional board. I think that three colleges in Glasgow have got on excellently to work together. We have agreed a curriculum to 2020. We have ensured that we have focused on student success. The regional board is the regional board that is doing its own business and trying to get it settled down and so forth, and it is trying to add some value. Let's hope that it does. I am sorry, but I am not going to let you back in there, Paul. The board at Edinburgh is both the regional board and the college board, so it is a single board, so the situation is different. With regard to national bargaining, the settlement with the support staff this year and the uplift of 1 per cent that we agreed to pay our teaching staff put me half a million pounds further into the red, but I am 100 per cent behind national bargaining. I think that it is the right way to go. We need to accelerate the pace. We need to look at the college funding mechanism alongside the review of paying conditions, but we also need to look at who are all the professionals that support students' learning. We need to have a wider review. The mechanism is in place and it has begun to work on the support side, but we have a good bit to do. I agree that we need to accelerate the pace around terms and conditions and national bargaining. I am going to come back to you, Paul, if I get a chance. To follow on from those points, three to four years ago, if you were to speak to businesses about the role of colleges and their impact on the economy, you would have got a fairly negative answer. I think that now we are getting better. It is taking time. The answers that our members and other businesses point to in terms of skill shortages and how they are being addressed by the college system are starting to feed through, but how the system on the whole and how schools and colleges instill the types of character and soft skills that small businesses are looking for, whether that is communication problem solving, is still a huge journey to take. For the past two years, about a quarter to a third of small businesses have violated skill shortages as a key barrier to growth, and how the college sector, as a whole, addresses them is unclear at the moment. I am glad to hear that from both principals supporting national pay bargaining and seeing that coming in at a faster pace. Can I ask both of you if both of your colleges have a key pay harmonisation across all the former campuses? Yes, in terms of pay harmonisation, not in terms of terms of conditions. My point, chair, was that alongside national bargaining, which is the salary increase and deservedly so, is the equally important necessity to modernisation of the workforce, to modernisation of the terms of conditions. We were able to agree with our trade unions that we could pay them more. We still cannot agree that we could alter their terms of conditions. That is a big challenge, particularly when you are working with industry, to have conditions that make it flexible so that you can be responsive to industry. As a college, we have found that difficult. As a sector, we have found that difficult to get the unions to be even wanting to discuss the modernisation of their terms of conditions. We have harmonised both terms and conditions and pay. The barrier in Glasgow has purely been that trade unions refuse to even get into a discussion on terms and conditions and pay harmonisation, or is it a reluctance to discuss before national pay bargaining comes into place, or is it just so that it can be clear on harmonisation terms and conditions? We have industrial harmony at the college. I do not want to open that up. We did, at one point, agree with the local trade unions and the staff to have a vote on revised terms and conditions. The staff voted in favour of the majority, and then the officers of the branch and the national officers ignored that vote, and we were back to zero again. To a certain extent, I think that our challenge is that we were probably harmonising maybe four or five sets of terms and conditions from a wide variety of legacy colleges. I think that Glasgow enjoyed some of the very best terms and conditions in the whole sector, and you can imagine that there would be some staff that were lucky to give those up. It is a work in progress. I do not think that that is in any way hampered the commitment to our teachers, to student success, and our performance rates show that that has not been the case. We will continue to be able to discuss unions in a constructive way at a local college level, and we will continue as some of our senior staff are positively supporting national bargaining and the discussions that are associated with the modernisation of the terms and conditions. It is a work in progress. There is a lot at stake, and we want to make sure that we get it accurately and negotiate it. My second question was on the quality of learning. You said that, of your students, 96 per cent were going on to positive destinations. Can you give any other statistics as to what the change has been pre-merger and post-merger as to the percentage of students going on to positive destinations, the percentage of students achieving passes in their courses? What range of statistics are using to measure success, pre- and post-reform? The measures that we are using to look at the student experience are—there are two groups of measures that we are using—we are using student feedback surveys. We look at what students say about the student experience, and we look at the performance indicators that are published nationally. We look at our performance indicators and how well we have completed courses in the further education and higher education sector and the degree to which students have achieved what they set out to achieve. This year, broadly, we have made some improvements in full-time, etchy and FE. Our performance indicators are not as good as they were last year on part-time, etchy and FE. I have not brought those figures with me today, but I can certainly make those available to the committee. The main reason why the further education statistics where they are down are because students are completing the units of their courses, but they are not completing the full course. That is something that we can turn around within this year. It is something that we have already put measures in place to make sure that that does not happen again. I am sure that we will see a significant improvement in those performance indicators this year because it is about resulting not the quality of work. Students are very positive about being in Edinburgh College and the feedback from students about their courses is positive. We do very well in higher education courses and the students who go on to the degree pathways from Edinburgh College to a range of universities, but, in particular, to Napier and Queen Margaret University are very positive. According to the last set of funding council figures, the City of Glasgow College is the third most popular destination for school leavers who are proceeding on to higher education after South Clyde University and after Glasgow University. In terms of success rates, our full-time success rates in higher education have increased pre-merger to post-merger from 64 per cent to 76 per cent. In part-time, they have increased from 75 per cent to 78 per cent. In further education, full-time, they have increased from 53 per cent to 72 per cent and from part-time FE from 72 per cent to 82 per cent. Our student satisfaction rate is 94 per cent and, of that, that is 94 per cent that students are satisfied with the college. 90 per cent of students are satisfied with their course. 89 per cent would recommend their course to a friend and 93 per cent would recommend the college. I was, like Mary, a little bit baffled by the discrepancy in the reports from Edinburgh and Glasgow College in relation to their experience. It is not fair to say that Glasgow started two years earlier, but it was not driven by legislation and it was backed by a merger fund. The minister at the time suggested that there would be £50 million of recurrent savings that would support the merger process. Audit Scotland indicated that no such efficiencies were delivered, so is that not a more accurate reason as to why Glasgow finds itself where it is and Edinburgh is experiencing the challenges that it faces? I am not so sure, Liam Kerr, but you do not agree that having a merger at your own discretion in your own time backed by a merger fund is a considerably more straightforward proposition than having it driven by legislation and the backdrop of cuts and, also, in the absence of the £50 million that ministers were suggesting would be delivered through efficiencies? I agree to a point, absolutely, what you just said. However, all colleges were free to merge before 2010. The City of Glasgow College looked to the funding landscape and, because of our plans for the building, we had to anticipate that that would go down. We approached the funding council as colleges that were working very closely together and sought money from the funding council at that stage. Any set of colleges in Scotland were equally entitled to do that. We received £2.5 million from the funding council. It would have been great if all colleges had received that, but one of the things that City of Glasgow College did for the sector was to produce a report that circulated with our lessons learned. We established a merger research centre. We shared openly all our documents and all our approaches. At one stage, we were assisting 20 colleges in Scotland with their mergers. We were helping to project manage three actively in support of their mergers. The money helped. The team effort was an enormous effort that the boards put in in Glasgow. It was an enormous effort that the manager put in. It was an enormous effort that the teachers put in to keep focused on the learning. Maybe we had a first mover advantage. Maybe we had initial funding, but I think that the lessons learned that we learned painfully were able to be shared with the other colleges to help them to compensate for the money. The slight difference was that we did our merger in four phases. I think that the other colleges had a shorter time span. I think that let's not forget that on top of the merger, we had a huge amount of other reforms that distracted the managers at that time. We didn't have those at that time, so we didn't have regionalisation or reclassification or refocus curriculum and all the other ones that I mentioned before. I think that we anticipated it. We couldn't anticipate them all, but we anticipated it that some of them were coming down the track. Glasgow is a very progressive city and we just tapped into that and tried to get ahead. I've looked into this and tried to understand the answer to this question really since I took up post last summer. It seems to me that we all have better hindsight than we've got foresight, but it seems to me that looking at it, the business case for Edinburgh College was very optimistic. The business case set out to reduce 240 full-time equivalent posts in a two-year period at a time when there was also an agreed no redundancy policy. The college did get funding at that time from the funding council to support a voluntary severance scheme, and that went some way to helping to make the college the shape it wanted to be. One of the ways in which the college could have done things differently was to look at the amount of front-line management and promoted post structure for teachers. The college planned to take out 60 per cent of management posts. Nobody wants to spend too much money on management, but I think that that left our college in short of the kind of people who drive the change on the curriculum side. Although we did have some funding to support the college going forward in voluntary severance, 18 months ago, again before I took up post, but it's well documented, the college asked the funding council for a significant increase in its cash for that year to invest in the college to help to turn the college around. Some small sum of money was coming. I think that about £2.5 million was asked for in the college was able to get £300,000. That's the kind of investment that the college needed at that time. Without being able to hold reserves, it's difficult to see how colleges can make that investment when they need to for transformational change. I think that more investment at that stage would really have helped Edinburgh College. In terms of the student experience, we've seen figures from the funding council suggesting enrolments between 2010, 11 and 2014 drop from around £383,000 to £297,000, and the headcount drop from £306,000 to £227,000. What's been the experience in Glasgow and Edinburgh in terms of those opportunities, particularly on a part-time basis? Could you also address the concerns that were raised by NUS Scotland about the availability of bursary support, indications that around 70 per cent of bursary support in colleges has now been maxed out with questions arising as to how students will be able to sustain themselves on their courses for the remainder of the term? We will be able to support our students this year. We've projected forward, but it's actually very tough. The bursary support is very, very tight. We have some emergency fund that we help our students with as well. Our student numbers have dropped partly because we could do more to recruit, but also the skillsseekers, jobseekers allowance figures have dropped in this area, so we've got fewer of those students. Two of our universities dropped their entrance levels in that material effect. We've had a drop overall, but we've had a one per cent decrease in our credits year on year on year, and we've transferred credits to other colleges as well. We've felt the effect of our reduction in student places. We are trying to support our students, though, as best we can, given the current student position in Scotland for colleges. We still have part-time students, roughly two thirds of the college is part-time. There's no doubt about it that the college and the sector has been refocused from lifelong learning to developing Scotland's young workforce to prioritising 18 to 24-year-olds. However, we still have been able to attract and support part-time learners. The other challenge that you mentioned was bursary support. It's a real pressure for all the colleges in Glasgow and my college, particularly as we have plan to increase the number of full-time further education students out of the college. We're having to dip into some of the money to support that. I hope that additional bursary money can be found, because it makes the difference between a young person coming to college or not. It's that simple. I would like to ask about developing Scotland's young workforce. You mentioned that the airport key part of college reform was the refocus, as you have already mentioned. I would like to talk about the tale of two cities' colleges, where we have the wood commission. One of the things that came up with the wood commission was the fact that building relationships with businesses was extremely important. One of the key parts of regionalisation was that you would be a better place to do that. From what I have heard this morning, it seems that Paul Glasgow seems to be in a good place, but I mentioned that more work could be done on that employee engagement. Where exactly are we with both colleges at this point? Glasgow is in a great place, in the sense that we have planned to refocus our approach away from, if you will, academic industry departments to industry academies. We have 100 planned, and in our second year of that planning, we have delivered 28. The whole approach is an approach in which we work really closely with businesses. We get the business to help to set the assignments for the students. We have several thousand students, maybe three thousand students at any one time, if you will, in student experience. We have 40 staff at the minute in doing industrial placements. We have students who are getting inputs from industry bodies to show what the industry standard is required. We have tried to ensure that we are teaching to the industry standard. How do we know that? Will we take part in skills competitions sponsored by industry? City of Glasgow College is ranked number one in the United Kingdom for its technical and professional skills. It also delivered membership of the UK squad in world skills, so we have a culinary arts to world-class level. I think that our approach is very much focused on delivering for Glasgow and delivering wider than that, because we have a number of national centres of expertise, so we are delivering in UK terms and even internationally. That is probably partly to do with our legacy. The City of Glasgow College was very much a higher education hub, working closely for a number of years with industry, and I think that we are just going to continue to raise that game. Thank you, convener. I think that this is an area where many parts of Edinburgh College actually excel. Many of our young people, both those part-time and in-work and those working in our full-time courses, have very good links with industry. We have a large number of placements. We have industry-quality facilities in the college where industry is coming in and working with us on that. We have a very positive story to tell. Like Glasgow College, we win a lot of industry awards and we have a lot of industry events inside the college. The area where I think that there is a need for policy to look again—the committee was wanting to look at policy today—is how we make it easy for employers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to engage with schools, colleges and universities without that being done in a piecemeal way. We have very good employment relationships with our departments in the college, but I am keen to see us develop further a way, particularly for small businesses, to be able to be asked once and to contribute once and to be able to talk to schools, colleges and universities all at the same time rather than the effect at the moment, which is that lots of people put a lot of demand on small businesses' time. I think that we could get more leverage for community planning and for economic development in an area by improving that element of our work. I was going to ask Barry and Gordon what their opinions were of the same question, effectively, what is the interaction, because there has always been a complaint from the wood commission on that the interaction has not been great. Are we fuller forward? I think that I would probably say no, because if we reflect back on the wood commission and the Government's DIW response to that, it was quite clear that employers and businesses had to shape and benefit from the wider education system. There is a seven-year plan, and we are very early days, but what strikes me is how little we know about the relationship between small businesses and colleges. Based on the report that we published two weeks ago with regard schools, there are things that we can tease out, but there is a need to unpack that notion of industry and concentrate on the 98 per cent of small businesses that are in and around the college network and deliver what they need. To be honest, we are getting there. The point that Annette made is an important one. We are reaching a stage where there are multiple groups and we could substantially over-egg the pudding. There is a need to rationalise and focus the effort at a regional level. The colleges have the right scale and focus, but the colleges are working with the schools and giving access points to the local business community, which is still not there. In small businesses in particular, is that not a legacy from the past? It is always difficult to engage with, to be fair to everyone, small businesses. Small businesses are pie. Their term is one person who is trying to push the business forward. They just need somebody there and then to deal with the issue. It is a difficult one to begin with. It is not like dealing with larger industry. They have 10-year plans and five-year plans. A lot of businesses are just looking at the here now and how they are going to progress. That is something that we need to work on, but it is one that is a legacy from forever. As far as I can tell, it is coming from a self-employed, small business family background. Absolutely. I think that when you review the policy and the history around this, we have been talking about this for well over a decade and it is something that we have not cracked yet. What we found from our research related to schools, and I see no conflict with the college sector either, is that although there are small numbers engaging, how they engage, how committed they are, what they are willing to do, whether that be work experience, classroom talks, guidance on entrepreneurship, guidance to the principals, they are willing to do it, but they need to be asked. Where are we to design a system that we are about to engage in meaningful proactive grassroots engagement at a very ultra-local level? You would build up the relationships, you would break down the barriers, between staff and the outcomes that would flow from that. We see that businesses that are engaged in schools lead to better outcomes for the young person, but for the business, there is a wage premium on business engagement. There are better outcomes in relation to lower levels of not-in-education employment or training. It is a win-win situation. I need to galvanise the whole system across Scotland to deliver what businesses need. I agree with a lot of the comments that Barry made. I attended the national DYW group last night, Rob Woodward, MD at STV chairs that group, so it was the first time that the groups had all come together. Glasgow pulled up and running now for over a year. Strong private sector leadership from the chamber, backed by a strong private sector board. Others have come in through the system. They are getting three years' funding from the Government in setting up and supporting that. Those groups will be important in providing the glue to bring education and business together. I was quite enthused last night by a lot of the positive contributions from across the country. I will probably get more experience at the work across the three years' where the local authorities had always a strong relationship with the chamber in terms of support and work experience. I think that they see that building on that. The challenges that you highlighted for engagement with small businesses was one of the themes that they discussed in the working groups last night. It is definitely on their radar, but there are practical issues around small businesses getting time out of the day-to-day run of their business to commit into a school curriculum and with little opportunity to chop and change at the last minute to the pressures of business. I was enthused last night by the work and the progress of the DYW groups, but I think that there is more to be done. It is a challenging environment to do that on an on-going basis. We have provided into each of the groups regional skills assessments, so fairly detailed analysis of regional economic geographies, which will hopefully help them to set priorities in terms of how they set out their business plan. We will be working with them around their key performance indicators as well around things such as modern apprenticeships and equality and diversity agenda. Colleges have always been known for delivering vocational and the focus is on vocational education at the moment. Obviously, to deliver for business, that is what we need to be going for. What specific changes have taken place as a result of the Wood commission and the Scottish Government's free focus on that? How has partnership developed with local authorities? I know that there were areas that were highlighted in the Wood report. In fact, Renfrewshire was one of them at Reed Care College as well as the Renfrewshire Council working together and the chamber working together. Where have partnerships been successful? Where have they been developed? Where have we gone with that? A particular strength of Edinburgh College has been the work that we have done with our three local authority areas. We are not just represented but active at all levels in the community planning partnership. That includes on the skills groups, on the workforce groups, on the economic development groups. I am supporting East Lodian Council by leading their poverty commission. Sitting alongside that, we have refreshed our entire approach to employer councils. We now have employer councils in every curriculum area in the college that has been refreshed this year. We are trying to make it easy for employers not just to contribute to commenting on the effectiveness of our courses but at the stage of designing the courses. That has made a major difference. We have increased the number of students who get more regular placements and we have increased the number of business partners who come in and do work in the college with us. There is still a bit to go in terms of the DYW agenda, but it is an area where we are seeing a significant shift in our vocational orientation, both in further and in higher education. Sir Ian Woods visited City of Glasgow College as one of the first colleges to learn what we were doing because of the very close links that we had with industry and our partnership with schools. We have managed to pioneer, if you like, putting higher education or higher vocational education into the senior fears of schools with working with the local authority very successfully. That is an extension of the school links programme. We have also supported some novel and innovative developments such as Newlands Junior Academy, Jim McCall's sponsored academy. We provide all the vocational expertise for that, so that is a very specialised solution in trying to help young people to get back into education and then on to employment. The college also works really closely with the chamber of commers. I sat on the board of the chamber of commers and I was smiling when I heard Gordon talking about the work with Glasgow chamber of commers because I commented to the chief executive only last week that a third of his report was based on education. I had never seen that before and the nine years I had been associated with the Glasgow chamber of commers, so increasingly the chamber of commers is working even more closely with the college than before. We work with the Glasgow economic leadership. Glasgow is a very cohesive city. The three colleges in Glasgow have mapped their curriculum to the priorities of Glasgow as it goes forward to 2020, so that we are trying to ensure that we have that pipeline of workforce to replace the skills shortage that are coming down the track. We work very closely with some very large companies. We work with micro companies, but we work with some of the top-ten shipping companies in the world. The full spectrum is there. We are seeing students benefiting from that. For example, we had 245 guaranteed interviews for our students. City of Glasgow College aspires to guarantee all its students jobs in the future. If you look across the college landscape, you can identify real strengths in partnership development activity. A reference to our own work, we have done around the energy sector. There is an energy skills partnership, which is a consortium of the colleges that are initially led by Dundee College. We have a development manager, Jim Brown, and a team around there. It is a fantastic example of how they can take curriculum and then share that across the college networks. There are things that overhead line. Technicians developed in Inverness, but shared with Fife, AIR and then Dumfries and Galloway in a very rapid process. That is working alongside SSC and Scottish Power, which are doing huge investments into their grid connections. You can look into Ayrshire and some of the work that they have done around their engineering forum, particularly around aerospace, hospitality sector, which was touched on earlier around West College and what they have been doing with Ferguson's, but you can apply that. There are examples like that across most colleges and areas like Forth Valley, where they are really strong and things like process engineering. I think that sometimes we get a bit frustrated in terms of business that everything is going to be delivered in the local college and we should recognise that we are not a huge place and that we should do more sharing and knowledge transfer across the college environments. We are all part of the public sector. From the public sector, we should be more collaboration in terms of delivering and meeting needs of industry and there are certainly some good examples of that imagery. Unquestionably, there has been significant investment in employer-led infrastructure over the past two years and there will be for the next two. I think that the point that I was trying to make is that there is a difference between formulating and the greener strategy at a higher level and the operational delivery on the ground and how closely we have to watch that to make sure that it is delivering what smaller micro-businesses need. One of the points that I would stress at this juncture is the need to make sure that there is sufficient knowledge transfer. Partnerships are taking place between staff and business to break down those barriers at a very local level. That would go some way to producing more mutual benefits and learning, because at the moment they are quite different worlds and there is a degree of mutual misunderstanding about what takes place on the other side. Probably in response to George Adam's questions that most of my answers have been given, I think that it is good to seek the reassurance that this consultation or sort of co-operation is now working with businesses and indeed when you look at the people that you are involved with local authority schools and employers, I think that that is a giant step forward because of all the frustration that any kid who has come out of college with a qualification then was not going to get a job at any description. I think that it could get to a stage where it was worthwhile, but I know that you, Barry, said that you take 22 per cent off college people into small businesses. Is there still a willingness that a dialogue takes place between big businesses, such as George Adam mentioned, near larger businesses? What can he dialogue because I remember that I chaired a conference a couple of months ago and Paul was one of the speakers there, but what we find is that the audience, there were very, very few large employers there. It was more about people who were wanting to deliver retraining and people who wanted to deliver a service, but I found that larger employers didn't seem to be actively involved. Is that, Barry, or can he break him down a wee bit? I think that Scotland does not have that many large businesses. It is almost entirely smaller micro in its nature, but what larger businesses can do is allocate resources in a much easier way. The point that we highlighted in the report is that if a micro business with four employees gets involved in a school and provides two to three hours a month, that is the same of a business of 250 employees hiring a new member of staff. The time and cost constraints that your most smallest businesses in Scotland find to do that type of thing is challenging, whereas typically larger businesses can allocate specialist resources to corporate social responsibility, employer engagement, whereas in your micro business the owner is doing multiple jobs, they are running the business, they are doing HR, they are doing legal, and how they bolt all that on top of the commercial pressures that they face is challenging. I point to the fact that when we spoke to small businesses about their relationship with the education system, they were very willing to get involved because it is an extension of their almost moral, altruistic belief that they need to do more to prepare young people for the world of work. The motivation and belief are about getting the mechanism right and shaping the ask in the proposition to get more employers to contribute. I wonder if any of the college sector here would ask. Obviously, reform is a big giant step forward for a lot of people, and I think that there are a lot of people actually buying into that, but there is still some criticism out there. The NUS, for example, said that student support is not fit for purpose. The EIS said that college reforms had not improved education in the sector. Would you like to comment on that? I would disagree that it has not had any benefits to the sector. I think that college reform was due, and it is welcome, and it will bring great benefits to the sector. It is certainly helping to turn things around in my college. On the issue of student funding, the fact that college students do not have the security of funding that universities have is a major disincentive for students in Scotland. It is an area in which we are looking at the students who drop out of college early on in their courses in Edinburgh College. I think that it is probably the case across the sector. Sight financial difficulties are the main reason for leaving the course before there is a quarter of the way through it, which is the critical point of counting. I believe that there are significant pressures on students who are trying to come to college. There are good benefits for people in terms of childcare, so that benefits people, but the pressures on students financially are leading many students in our college to drop out very early in the course. Let's not forget that there was no significant college reform for about 20 years. There were small changes and small initiatives. After that period of time, if you have such a huge reform agenda at such a speed, it is obvious that you will get that reaction, particularly from the teaching unions. Reform has delivered transformational change for some colleges and probably transactional change for others, in the sense that it has been a major step change for some. For some, it is a work in progress or it is larger and more of the same, but hopefully it will develop into something better within time. The pressures that the students that we serve in the colleges are ever-growing. We were pleased, I suppose, that we had a flat cash settlement. We were possibly expecting a cut, a further cut to the college budgets. We were pleased that it was flat cash. We were looking ahead to see what might happen in the future. We don't want any further cuts to the college sector because ultimately it doesn't affect the institutions per se, it affects the people that we serve. I think that the students that we serve are among the most vulnerable in Scotland and in Glasgow. We work really hard to try to convince the policy makers that they should ring-fence, if you like, bursary monies that we would support NUS in calling for more of that, simply because, as I said earlier, if those monies are not available, then students don't attend college. Students that we serve have challenging backgrounds. That support money is not a lot of money at the end of the day, but that support money makes the difference between being able to afford to travel to college, being able to subsidise their living expenses, or getting a part-time job and staying at home. Ultimately, any additional monies that we can get, particularly to support the bursary monies or our students or indeed the sector, are very welcome, but are very needed. What is your drop-out percentage? Across the country, I think that it is about 5 per cent to 6 per cent. It varies from college to college. I do not figure, obviously, that there is an IT with that. We can certainly provide that to the committee if that would be helpful. Thank you very much. My question is a bit robust, but it is not a critique. It is to help me to elicit a better understanding of what is going on. There is something missing. We had no attendees last year at colleges of £119,000 in the SFC and European Social Fund, £121,000 and another £598 for the SRUC, but there were only 671 presented by SDS. Perhaps you can explain that. I know that we have engaged and thank you for your help, Gordon, on the project that we did on HGVs. However, if I look and there is a consequence of that, I did an analysis of employment shortages in Scotland across HGVs, forestry, the hospitality sector, the construction sector. We have got a requirement for about 150,000 to 180,000 people, and that is not 10 years down the road, that is now. What is happening in terms of, I heard about the industry academies, exactly how do you engage in a meaningful way to determine and forecast what is likely to happen by sector? Where is the sectoral analysis that tells us what is likely? How do we translate that into the industry academies or the places in the colleges that will develop and produce the courses that are required to meet the demand shortages that we have? How do you engage? Give a bit of background. Skills Development Scotland works through the industry leadership groups that are constructs both from Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, that help drive economic strategy, Scottish Energy advisory boards meeting Edinburgh this afternoon. We have now developed 10 skill investment plans in conjunction with industry leadership groups, which look at the key and growth sectors. There are 10 of those, energy, food and drink, tourism, finance, ICT, life sciences, engineering, chemical sciences, construction and creative industries. There are other pieces of research around areas such as textiles, HGV, road college that you are aware of just now and a piece of work in forestry and timber technologies. We produce those. We see industry as the custodians of those and it is industry that sign the plans off. They are shared through the joint skills committee, which is an advisory group between the funding council and the SDS. Both Barry and Paul have joined the skills committee. They are cornerstone documents on a sectoral basis for colleges to analyse and look at and get a better understanding of where sectoral needs are. November 2014, we also published regional skill assessments. They are all contained within our websites. We have updated that data two months ago. That brings together all the economic data that we can garner, outputs from the colleges, from NOMIS, the UK system through DWP and feedback from Scottish Enterprise in terms of what they see and their growth areas. Again, those are cornerstone documents so that we hope. The funding council insists that the colleges incorporate into the regional outcome agreements in terms of how they would set out a forward plan and how they would meet the needs of local economic development. The regional outcome agreements are the agreement for funding from the funding council to the regional colleges. It is all very interesting. As you know, I said on the economy committee that we have discussed before. We have all those bodies talking to each other. Those of us who are interested in outcomes and improve productivity and what have you, you have talked about all that data that you are gathering. I am not criticising getting involved between the two cities, but I forbid that I would do that. Clearly, there are different stages of development, and I am sure that they are sharing the expertise. However, if I go to the Edinburgh report, the college sector needs to improve the volume and quality of the employer engagement. We will come to that later. I know that one of my colleagues will be doing that. More needs to be done to ensure that the college has the right data to forecast employer needs effectively. What is happening to the data that you produce? Where is it being translated to an outcome that will generate and fulfil the shortages that we have? I do not see it happening to me. I have articulated into the regional outcome agreements. I was looking at the UHIFE regional outcome agreement and it cites a lot of our material all throughout the industrial sectors and where they are going to prioritise. Our staff undertook sessions with each of the regional colleges along with the SFC regional outcome managers in terms of sharing the information. There is a narrative report, and then there is a data matrix of around 50 different data sources. Perhaps as colleagues, we worked with, certainly, in Glasgow across the three regional collage structures in Glasgow to share that information. As Paul said, they have set out a curriculum through to 2020 based on what we feel is a rich source of data. This is data that, for a variety of reasons, there used to be a lot more economic data produced when you had the larger objective to European structural programmes, because that data was required to justify the European funds. Over the last probably 10 years, with changes to the Scottish Enterprise structure and local enterprise companies going into the one structure, there is not as much data that has been produced. Over the last two years, I think that we have done a really good job of pulling that information forward. It might be something that we could do in terms of a more general information session for committee members, but there is a real rich source of data there, which has been held up with high regard and very positive feedback from the majority of colleges. That is very helpful, but why, on that basis, in the last question, the basis, have you only submitted or SDS only through the Employability Fund secured 671 places when, in fact, you have set a target of 2,750? I am not familiar with those figures, the figures that I have got in terms of the Employability Fund. Are you talking through colleges? SDS was asked in a ministerial letter of guidance in 2014-15 to deliver 17,150 training places in total, including 2,650 college places through the Employability Fund. I think that there has been some issues around the colleges. The responsiveness to funding criteria and to the availability in some colleges have done it really strongly, and others have probably focused more on their core business. The figures that I had for 14-15 were volumes delivered in 2,596 through the Employability Fund within the college structure, so we might need to come back in and see if there are any other figures that were presented in the papers to us, because it is quite clearly… If you have different figures, it would be helpful if you supplied them to us. I thank the panel for coming in this morning and giving us your time. We would really appreciate you doing that. I will go to spend briefly before we bring in the cabinet secretary. I welcome Angela Constance, cabinet secretary for education and lifelong learning and our company officials, who is the second panel this morning on college reform. I invite the cabinet secretary to make some opening remarks. Thank you, convener. Sorry to hear your suffering with your throat. I very much welcome the opportunity to join committee again this morning to discuss the important matter of college reforms, the benefits for learners and businesses alike, and to look to the future for this valued and valuable sector. I want to start by saying a few words about the sector. Colleges play a crucial role in this Government's commitment to improving the employability of all Scotland's young people. Colleges' ability to flex to the needs of industry while attracting young people to courses that better prepare them for the world of work is excellent. Current youth employment levels are at their highest for 10 years and colleges have played a significant role in that achievement. Quite simply, colleges matter. They make a vital contribution to our people, our economy and our society. I turn to the reform programme. Our overall ambition was to improve young people's life chances and to generate the skilled workforce that Scotland needs for economic growth and, of course, to ensure the best use of public funds. The essential building blocks of reform were a regional structure creating colleges of considerable scale and influence, outcome agreements to ensure far greater transparency about the impact of colleges and their contribution to Scottish Government priorities, and to strengthen governance with increased accountability and board effectiveness in improving outcomes for learners and businesses alike. The importance of proper stewardship of colleges, a live issue, cannot be overstated. Good boards can support a college to better the lives of students and to help businesses better perform. They can be a force for good, great good. However, because of their vital role, poor boards could risk actively making things and making things much worse. Let me acknowledge this point, convener, as other contributors have pointed out that a reform programme of this scale and pace has been extremely challenging. Structures have changed very considerably, placing great demands on college leaders and their staff, but to their enormous credit, we are now beginning to see evidence of the impact of reforms. Colleges are delivering their targets, their activities more closely aligned to the needs of learners and businesses, and they are having greater impact. They are a good example of public sector reform. Wherever the sector is already playing a central role in the delivery of developing the young workforce, Scotland's youth employment strategy is another major public sector reform. That is an effort that is relying on the vision, the input and the commitment of many partners, particularly schools and employers. It is my belief that the regional structure now in place across Scotland and other aspects of reform have been instrumental in terms of the great progress so far. Reforms have given colleges a major role in meeting regional skills needs and the influence and capacity to do so. By way of conclusion, our colleges have implemented the most profound set of public sector reforms in Scottish tertiary education for more than a generation, which is, in itself, a remarkable achievement. Audit Scotland last year and Scotland Colleges 2015 report acknowledged many positives. The report confirms that colleges finances are sound, that planning for mergers was good and that the sector has responded well to a period of significant change. Now that the debate over structures is behind us, we must now ensure that they work to fulfil their potential and we must continue to evidence the benefits. In my letter of guidance to the funding council that was published last month sets out priorities for both college and university sectors and what has been a tight financial settlement for public service in Scotland. I am pleased to have been able to protect college resource funding at 2015-16 levels. I have been clear of the priority that I attached to continuous improvement in learner outcomes. I recognise that there is more to do and I look forward to continuing to support the sector in its next phase. You mentioned a lot of the issues surrounding the changes that have taken place because of the reforms. In a nutshell, can you tell us what you expected the overall benefits from college reform would be and whether those have been delivered by the reforms? I suppose that, in a nutshell, I will answer your question at a high level convener. I am sure that we will get into the detail later. Ensuring that Scotland has a skilled workforce, ensuring that young people leave college with the skills and qualifications that will get them into work, we have certainly seen positive destinations from college leavers. The first time that we have published that information sitting at 81.5 per cent, that is positive destinations into further study, training or employment. The funding council has put a range of measures in place in that the impact of change is continuously monitored. Essentially, it is about ensuring that we have the right learning in the right place and that we have high-quality learning that is equipping the workforce for the jobs that exist today and for tomorrow. The Wood commission recognised the benefits for employers of a strong vocational education system and the positive engagement between employers and education providers. However, the Wood commission also pointed out that only 29 per cent of employers are recruiting young people directly from education. Colleges Scotland said that colleges are now acting as a regional hub for engagement with employers to deliver the Scottish Government youth employment strategy. That is particularly said to be helpful for employers who are small to medium businesses that enable them to engage more effectively. Having said that, has college reform demonstrably improved links between colleges and business? Is there better engagement now than there was before? Are there other examples to demonstrate that? What college reform has achieved, along with the developing young workforce agenda, is that they have secured better partnership work between colleges, businesses and schools. When you look at the pace of development around foundation apprenticeships, it started off with the two pathways. There are now several pathways across seven key sectors of the economy, with reaching into hundreds—about 300—young people pursuing a foundation apprenticeship. When you look at the other vocational courses that pupils in their senior phase are doing, there has been a significant expansion from year 1 to year 2. There are 2,500 senior phase pupils studying a variety of courses and colleges—170 different types of college courses that those 2,500 students are pursuing. That is over 20 or so local authorities and hundreds of schools. Colleges, in my view, have always been particularly good at engaging with local employers, particularly small employers. I have seen evidence of that over the years from the college in my own area. West Lothian College is constantly tweaking the provision of what they provide and how they provide it in response to employer needs. What college reform and the young workforce agenda has managed to do is to put the architecture in place to ensure that systems wide change. As Ian Wood has often commented about having colleges of scale and influence, we have also invested in young people groups at a local level. This is an area that is led by Roseanna Cunningham and Annabelle Ewing, but it is a crucial linchpin to invest in young people groups, because calling BT is right. It is not acceptable that only 29 per cent of employers employ young people directly from education. If we address structural youth unemployment—we know that youth unemployment is the most that has been since 2005—that figure needs to be much, much higher. Of course, there are some important key performance indicators in the young workforce and the youth employment strategy around that. The evidence that we have seen so far indicates a bit of a gulf between the big companies who have the mechanism and structure to be able to engage with the schools and the small to medium businesses that provide the bulk of employment in Scotland. However, they have a much more complicated capability because, usually, small businesses do not have the same time, resources or facilities, yet it is important that they become engaged. There seems to have been highlighted a certain lack of knowledge as to how to engage effectively and, as I said, the complexity in doing that. Has the college mergers helped in that at all? I believe that it has. As well as the college mergers, the investing young people groups have an extremely important role in leading the engagement, particularly with SMEs at a local level. I have visited on a few occasions some members will be familiar with Dundee and Angus College, which is an excellent example of how to engage with businesses of all size in the locality. I have went to visit their code academy and you see the breadth of activity that they are engaged with a key sector, such as STEM, ICT and coding. It starts with primary school children and senior phase pupils, adult learners and evening classes, as well as their full-time provision in coding courses. They are a great example of how to engage with SMEs. Because of their modern facilities, they will often have SMEs in leading input and delivering sessions to students and to work closely with students in terms of mentoring. There are exemplars out there, and I would say that Dundee and Angus College are one example of that. I am pleased to hear about those examples. How do you perceive that the remaining barriers and barriers to employer engagement will be overcome? The whole ethos of college reform of the young workforce agenda was recognised by SMEs, particularly by SMEs. That requires a bit of push and shove on both sides. There are definitely things that the world of education can do better. It has to be more outward looking. I would contend that it is. Dundee and Angus College are not the only example of a college that engages very effectively with local business. I can think of Fort Fally College, West loading College, City of Glasgow College and South Lanarkshire College, which I visited recently. The 21 regional groups will be led by industry. That is not about being led by the world of education or local authorities. They all have an important part to play. Colleges have to be represented in the regional investing young people groups. Community planning partners and local authorities as the local education provider have to be around the table, but the regional investing young people groups are led by industry. I think that that will help enormously. There is an appetite out there. It is not easy for small businesses to be proactively engaging, and we have to be more welcoming and enable that to happen. Cabinet Secretary, you mentioned increasing productivity and how important the role that colleges play in that. My personal experience with colleges in south of Scotland, particularly in Ailshire, has been a happy one in terms of how difficult at times clearly is demonstrating and taking great strides forward. You also mentioned your time with the structure, and that structure in college reform is behind us. You said that the structure was now in place. I wish I was as optimistic as you were about structures. I do not know if you saw me ask a question of Gordon Macintosh. I have to say that SDS has been very helpful in some of the projects that we have been doing in helping particular sectors. I asked the question from the SFC statistical publication of the 121,000 places placed in 2014-15. Only 671 came through SDS. I know that that is under another Cabinet Secretary's portfolio, but 671, out of the employment fund, out of 121,000, does not seem a lot. Is the structure working? I am not sure that I would necessarily look at colleges and their contribution to employability to an economy solely through the prism of things such as the employability fund. There are employability funds that come from the funding council and go direct to colleges. Colleges are free to bid for the employability contracts through open procurement, along with other training providers. There is an element of the SDS funding that is ring-fenced for colleges. I am struggling to see the connection between structures and employability provision. I think that it is important that the structures are all hanging together. As I said, I know that the two areas that contribute to the productivity that you are talking about and the contribution that colleges make to employment. I am surprised that your comment regarding a £6 million employability fund for SDS is not directly associated with business and employment, but the situation is that do we have the processes in place—I give you an example and I mentioned it again to Gordon McInnes who has been very helpful—as a result of an exercise that we did as a consequence of the project on higher SGVs in forestry, in hospitality and in life sciences. We have an estimated shortage in the workforce of 150,000 to 180,000 people, not 10 years down the road but almost immediate. One of the bodies responsible for engaging with the colleges and making sure that the skills are there is SDS, and they also do that through training providers. I am surprised when I am asking about the process and the guidance, because there are two cabinet secretaries involved, and I am sure that the agenda is the same one, that you are unable—or maybe I am not being clear enough in my questioning—as to why out of 122,000 places, only 671 places were put into the colleges for employability training. The core of what colleges do is employability. Whether that is about HNC courses, HND courses and more specific employability courses such as Certificate for Work Readiness, Colleges' Participation in Delivering Employability Fund provisions—I am not saying that all of that is not important. However, the 641 places that Mr Brodie refers to only accounts for a small proportion of the employability fund activities. The broader point that Mr Brodie is making is about that broad connectivity and strategic alliance between Skills Development Scotland, the funding councils and the colleges. It is imperative that all of those organisations work hard to ensure that outcome agreements are connected with the regional skills plans that are led and pulled together by Skills Development Colleges. That is important because, although we have a national economy and raising productivity to increase economic growth throughout the economy, is a key plank of the Government's economic strategy. It is imperative that we have a good handle on local economies. Mr Brodie mentioned the importance of the work that he does in Ayrshire College. Ayrshire College is a good example of another college that is making educational provision that is connected to its local economy. That is the final point. Here we have demand and labour opportunities. What I am trying to elicit is how do we optimise supply to meet that particular demand? All the various bodies that are involved, my understanding was that part of the college reform was to ensure the skills and the requirements, and the supply was there to achieve that. That is why the funding council and SDS have a range of joint planning activities. Those two organisations have to be working hand in glove to make appropriate plans in terms of the provision that has to meet the needs of local economies. I am absolutely clear on my expectations that both organisations have to have that focus on local economies. I think that, largely, colleges do have that. Is there always room for improvement? Of course there is. We are all familiar with the figures in recent times in college places. We have cut of 150,000 part-times. Under 16,000 are cut of 20,000 places. Over 25,000 are cut of 74,000. In total, there are almost a quarter of a million places in further education. The sacrifice of all those places would lead to more full-time places. Many of the part-time places were referred to as hobby courses. However, when we look at the full-time places in further education, that has gone down by 2,000. Given that we have 166 million cut in the Scottish Funding Council funding—it is in Audit Scotland report—166 million cut, we have a quarter of a million fewer places, and the promise of the full-time has not happened. What has gone wrong here? I would dispute that anything has went wrong. I know that, in many ways, we will be rehearsing and repeating some familiar arguments, but none the less I respect that this is an area that members are very interested in and are focused on. As a Government, we made a very clear commitment in our manifesto that we would maintain the full-time equivalent at 116,000 places. That was the measurement that we made a very public commitment to in our manifesto. There are a range of reasons why we feel that that is a more rounded measurement, because there are many measurements of activity within the college sector. We prefer the full-time equivalent measurement to, for example, head count, because head count does not always reflect the volume of activity that is associated to individual courses. We know that, with very short courses, 142 very short courses can be equivalent to one full-time course. As I suppose to cut to the chase with Mrs Scanlon, we have always been clear about our target as a Government, and that was 116,000 full-time equivalents. That was a manifesto commitment. We have always exceeded that target. That is the philosophy of that, which is to move towards more full-time provision relating to recognised qualifications that would improve employability prospects. We appreciate that, convener, but the previous cabinet secretary, Mike Russell, also said that, if 244,000 places had been sacrificed for several thousand additional full-time places, we could accept that. My problem here—I am using Spice and Audit Scotland figures—is that we have sacrificed a quarter of a million places, and we have also had a cut in full-time places. I do not want to repeat myself, but what we were promised—I appreciate what you are saying about full-time places, but I also say that part-time places can lead to people starting up their own businesses, etc. As a previous part-time student myself, I am aware of the benefits of part-time courses. I will just leave that one there, convener. We were promised that there would be a measurable increase in quality given the college mergers. Can you tell us how the quality of the student experience, the quality of education and training, is being measured? Gladly, it is important to address that specific point that part-time provision is important and that part-time provision still exists within the sector. As I previously explained, we have moved towards full-time provision. The number of full-time students over the age of 25 and the number of women full-time students under the age of 25 has increased, but I want to stress that we still have part-time provision within our college sector. That is not an insignificant investment, and with regard to those very short courses, they still exist where they have a role to play in terms of access to further education or indeed have a strong employability component. On Mrs Scanlon's point on information that gives a good insight to the quality of provision, I referred earlier to the first of our college leaver destinations survey. That is a very important piece of information demonstrating where students head to once they have completed their college course. As I said, that positive destination figure is at 81.5 per cent. There is also in developing a student satisfaction survey, and there has been a pilot with regard to that survey, and there will be an event later on in the year where the findings of that pilot survey will be shared with the stakeholders and, indeed, I am sure, will be shared with MSPs. Next year, the funding council will publish a student satisfaction survey. There are lots of local surveys in colleges, but it is important that there is a student satisfaction survey across the sector, and that will mean that all students will be asked their views. There is other work on education in Scotland, which is about supporting colleges to strengthen their ability to self-evaluate and ensure that they have good quality assurance arrangements in place. I am sure that you are familiar with the document with your friend and colleague, Mr Salmond. Within the SNP manifesto for 2011, there was a promise of national pay bargaining, indeed a promise of a national set of terms and conditions. I am sure that you understand that in the Highlands and Islands, and I was a lecturer before coming in here, colleagues of mine in that sector are paid up to £7,000 annual salary lower than colleagues elsewhere in Scotland. We would all find it unacceptable if teachers, nurses and doctors were paid different salaries in the Highlands and Islands compared to the central belt. This morning, we heard from the college principals that intensive discussions are taking place. They have been taking place for five years now. We need to accelerate the pace and also that transitional monies are needed. I wonder if I could point to the cut in funding to colleges from the Scottish funding council of £166 million and ask whether some of that money could be allocated towards the pay gap between college lecturers. I understand that college staff support staff. I understand that that has now been settled and that there is a national set of terms and conditions. The Government remains absolutely committed to national pay bargaining for many of the reasons that Mary Scanlon has outlined. I would say that progress has been made. There was a considerable effort and a very detailed work had to go on in devising the national rules and procedures. The majority of colleges are signed up to the national rules and procedures and to the principle of pay bargaining. I am keen through my discussions with the sector as a whole, with staff representatives and the funding council to be pushing that forward. I do not believe that we are far away from national pay bargaining, but we all have to pick up the pace here and get the agreement and principle that everybody is signed up to that. There are still some issues in terms of the college side. Some of that is not so much about the principle of national pay bargaining. Some of that is perhaps more internal as to how the sector as a whole is represented within colleges Scotland. I have always been clear that the issue of harmonisation will not be achieved overnight. I have always been crystal clear about that, but national pay bargaining is not unachievable. We all have to make that final step. Is the Government willing to fund transitional monies? Obviously, the UHI could not possibly give every lecturer an extra £7,000. Given the huge pay gap there, is the Government in future or once the agreement has been reached, is it willing to put money into the sector to ensure that we have equal pay? We are looking closely at the detail of that. I am conscious of the challenges for smaller institutions. Some of those smaller institutions that Mrs Scanlon will be familiar with are harder for the very small institutions, and they are very cognisant of that. I have a supplementary question from James Donnell. I would like to come back on a couple of points. Paul Whittle from City of Glasgow College said that the national pay bargaining was a process and not an event, and he was very confident that it would get there reasonably soon, which I think is fairly encouraging. I would like to go back to my colleague Mary Scanlon, who seems to be able to get away with showing SNP brochures here, which is grateful. I could get away with that, but she was talking about the difference between full-time and part-time. Surely the latest data from the Scottish Funding Council, which shows that 95 per cent of teaching hours were delivered in courses leading to a recognised qualification since 2006-07. The number of funded FT students studying recognised qualifications is up almost 2,000. The number of students studying HNC and HND qualifications that are highly prized by employers is up almost 4,000 in 2012-13. It is a positive move, and it also highlights the fact that the further education the colleges are doing there and making sure that people are ready for work once they leave the colleges. I mean, there are a number of very important statistics that relate specifically to outcomes. Mr Dornan is right to say that the number of students achieving HNC, stroke HNDs has increased by over 22 per cent between 2006-07 and 2013-14. Crucially, there has been a 34 per cent increase in students that progress from college to university with advanced standing. That is very important in terms of the widening and access agenda. We should not forget the role that colleges play in providing higher education across the sector. It is nearly 20 per cent, but for colleges such as the City of Glasgow, they primarily provide HE provision. In terms of more recognised qualifications being achieved by full-time students, we have nearly 11,000 more students successfully completing full-time courses whether that is in FE or the HE provision. In terms of outcomes for students, there is much to be pleased with. I know what the cabinet secretary has said in terms of achieving a solution on national pay bargain and that progress has been made. However, if I can just quote from the EIS submission for today's session, the reform process has singularly failed to make substantive progress in relation to national collective bargaining and equal pay for lecturing staff across the sector. Cabinet secretary, you like to respond to the EIS comments that seem to clash with your own on progress being made towards national pay bargaining. I met the EIS fella very recently, as I do with a range of stakeholders and trade unions. I do not think that we are far away from national pay bargaining. As I said earlier to Mary Scanlon, we all have to be stepping up to the plate on that one. We appreciate that there are some issues that still have to be resolved. I am really keen that those issues are resolved and that we will do what I can with the relevant partners. In terms of the harmonisation agenda, I would be very keen to see a road map to that. I would be keen to see the funding council but, crucially, the trade unions and Scotland's colleges working together to provide that road map over a period of time to see what progress can be made in terms of harmonisation. I think that we all like to see quick progress towards national pay bargaining. However, your comments seem to contrast with that of the EIS. You have also said that failure is likely to lead directly to industrial action. Would you consider that a failure of Government if there is industrial action as a result of a failure to reach an agreement on national pay bargaining? Any industrial action would be regrettable if it is not in the interests of students or their families. Government is not the employer. We have a role in terms of the glue in the system. I will continue to do what I can to support and encourage trade union representatives and employers to be working together in the interests of their institutions but, fundamentally, in the interests of students. You are right in saying that Government is not the employer but, as Mary Scanlon pointed out, it was in a Government manifesto to achieve. I would expect the Government to be doing that, rather than saying that they are not the employers. The EIS has also said that no other national harmonisation process has been unfunded and has cited the example of the Macron agreement for teachers and the NHS agenda for change along the lines of Mary Scanlon's questions. Will there be any additional funding to bridge the gap? Do you have any comments on aside from national pay bargaining, the colleges that have not accomplished the harmonisation of terms and conditions within their own individual college structures? I think that there are a number of things that have to be unravelled. It is important to be clear that the prospect of industrial action is about the 15 to 16 pay settlement. It is not about national pay bargaining and, as a Government, we do indeed remain committed to the principle of national pay bargaining. We will do everything that we can to make that a reality. As I have already said, I firmly believe that we are not far away from national pay bargaining. In terms of the pay settlement for this year, the three support unions, as indicated by Mrs Scanlon, have already settled. However, the issue of harmonisation has always been a longer-term one and one that would never be achieved overnight. However, we need that road map as to how we will get there. It is important that the road map is not something that I will do in my office in splendid isolation. The road map has to be devised by trade union representatives and representatives of the workforce and the employers, so that there is buy-in across the sector and from both the workforce and the employers. I welcome the fact that James Dorn has confirmed that SNP is producing brochures in the future, rather than manifestos, because it sounds a lot more fuzzy and cuddly. The numbers that Mary Scanlon pointed up point out the drop of around 150,000 in part-time places. However, the figures that we have had from the Scottish Funding Council in terms of full-time equivalent learning also suggest that, in terms of the hours of learning, there has been an over 3 per cent drop in those hours for 16 to 24-year-olds, a drop of over 12 per cent for 25-year-olds and a drop overall of just under 8 per cent. In terms of student unit of measurement, those have dropped since 2010 from 2,070,000 to just over 1.9 million. Even against the benchmark that the cabinet secretary has indicated of full-time equivalence being the key measure, we are seeing a drop in numbers. Does that not suggest that the Government is failing to deliver what it promised? No. I appreciate that there is a range of statistics and a range of measurements that can create quite a complex picture. However, when we look at the average hours per student, that has risen by 63 per cent. Before our term of office, the average hours of learning per student was 246. The average hours for learning per student is now 401. We know that we have more people under 25 and over 25 studying full-time courses. That has been a deliberate policy choice of this Government because more full-time courses, more recognised qualifications and better job prospects. However, that does not mean that part-time provision, which is important, still exists. We have gone from more learners and more hours against the figures produced by Scottish Founding Council that show the number of hours by age group are down and the student unit of measurement is also down. However, I turn to the issue in relation to funding. I think that we will have an opportunity to cover this a bit this afternoon. However, in the evidence in the first session, Annette Bruton suggested that student support and a lack of student support is the main reason for non-completion of courses. Paul Smart from Glasgow College made a plea that there are real pressures there and more funding is needed. Is that a plea that you are likely to heed? I am very alert to the range of issues in our student support system. I know that Mr McCartney and I will discuss this in detail later on this afternoon. I point to the fact that student support is at record level and that there has been a 29 per cent real-terms increase under the Government's term of office in student support. It is just over £105 million. Back in the day, we inherited a student support budget of around £67 million. In terms of the bursary that is paid to young people from low-income families or to people from low-income households, it is the highest bursary anywhere in the UK. We have always looked for ways to continuously improve. The student support offer is quite a complex proposition. I would certainly like to see it simplified. We are putting more money into student support and where shortfalls occur, we have always met those shortfalls. In terms of the college manager process itself, one of the arguments that your predecessor put in supporting the reform package and why additional funding was not needed, or certainly not needed to the extent that the college sector was suggesting at the time, was that it predicted that there would be £50 million of annual savings by 2015-16. Audit Scotland has made clear that that has not material. Why do you believe that Mr Russell got it so badly wrong? The Scottish Funding Council has confirmed that those £50 million annual recurring savings will be evident from this financial year onwards. It is not apparent for 2015-16 that it is just a delay in the arrival of the $50 million. No, not at all. I do not think that we have ever said that the savings would be immediate. When you embark upon a reform programme, quite often you have to invest some money, and there was certainly money invested to make mergers, for example, possible. I do not think that Mr Russell has ever made any claims about savings being immediately visible, but, as the funding council has confirmed from this coming financial year, those £50 million per year savings will be made. John Finnie, you have just followed on from Liam's question about student support. We did ask the previous people who were in here that the student support had a concern about that, and they said that the support was not fit for purpose. I am in a way relieved if you like that you will give additional money towards that. There are two questions. Prior to that, we did know that there was a percentage drop-out because of the lack of support. Do you have any idea what that number is just now? It goes without saying that for any student, the financial support that they receive is important, whether they are at college or university. While there will be many reasons that lead to students dropping out, there are personal circumstances, but there are personal finances and the financial packages that are available that are an important part of ensuring that students continue their engagement with their course. Can you tell us what the figure is for us? I can go away and ask the funding council or individual institutions if they have that information. How would you both speak at the same time? No, of course. No, of course not. Sorry, I couldn't catch the end of your question. No, I was saying that I would be happy to ask the funding council or individual institutions about what type of information they have with regard to the matter that Mr Pentland raises, but it is important to recognise that the positive destinations of people leaving college are at 81.5 per cent. We know that completion rates over the term of this Government have increased as well. I am not saying that student finance is not important and that we need to give it serious consideration, but we are increasing investment and we are seeing completion and retention rates up and good positive destinations. One final question. You said that the budget for 15.16 is flatlined. If you are going to give money to additional student support, where is that money coming from then? Well, as we do every year, any gap in student support is met from our resources and we have redirected resources in the student support. George Adam. You are glad to hear just one question, but for me it is probably the most important question. The key part of college reform was developing Scotland's young workforce and focusing on the vocational training for young people. We heard earlier on about all the great work that has been going on in Glasgow and Edinburgh College since then. My questions are quite simply. The college sector has been doing this historically. Is it better now? Has the college reform helped with that? Is it more focused? How can we at this stage make sure that some of the areas that maybe are not engaging with businesses to the extent that they should be? How do we help these colleges and make sure that they deliver on that? As I said earlier to Mr Beattie, the college involvement with the investing young people groups is absolutely crucial. As is the engagement between schools and colleges. That engagement has really went from strength to strength. We started off with the two pathfinders for the work that has been done on foundation apprenticeships. We now have several pathfinders into the foundation apprenticeships. Most local authorities are working with their local colleges on things such as foundation apprenticeships. As I said in my answer to Mr Beattie, there are 2,500 senior phase pupils across Scotland who are studying courses at college. There is a wide variety of college courses that are available to young people. There is a mutual benefit for both the college reform and the young workforce agenda. I am very clear—it goes back to my days when I was the Minister for Youth Employment—that I want to see the parity of esteem between vocational education and higher education. Much of that starts in the senior phase in secondary schools. The real ambition within our senior phase in secondary schools is that we have to move towards a system that is more bespoke for individual young people, where they can choose the right blend. They do not necessarily have to make a choice between pursuing academic—or what is strictly understood as academic—subjects and vocational subjects that they will be able to get the right blend that suits them. The pace of change from year 1 to year 2 in terms of the number of senior phase pupils studying courses at college in terms of the progress that has been made with foundation apprenticeships is very encouraging, but it is progress that we have to continue with, and we have to continue with that pace of progress. Liam McArthur, you are probably back to the line of question that Chip Brody was adopting earlier on in relation to the SDS's involvement. I think that I am right in saying that when these proposals first came forward in terms of transferring funding through the college learning programme and the employability fund, there was a concern of fragmentation. I think that it was at the time described as biscuit-tin funding of college places and of training generally. Is there a concern within Government that we may have too much segmentation or fragmentation of the funding that that is not necessarily helping in terms of having a clear view on what is happening in the delivery of training and skills development? I think that you always have to be alert to having clear strategic priorities, and you want to get that balance right between having a range of different types of funding opportunities but not having something that is too fragmented. For me, the bigger principle is always looking at outcomes and at our starting point is to be about what is the first and foremost delivery for students. Our next item is to take evidence on two pieces of subordinate legislation that is listed on the agenda. I welcome Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People and her accompanying officials. After we have taken evidence on the instruments, we will debate the motions in the name of the minister at item 3. Officials, of course, are not permitted to contribute to the formal debates. Before I invite the minister to make some opening remarks, I inform the committee that we will consider a petition next week that calls for kinship carers to receive the same allowances as foster carers. The instrument before us today should meet the petitioner's concerns—I certainly hope so. I invite the minister to make some opening remarks on both instruments. I thank you for the opportunity to introduce a variety of instruments that are arising from the Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014. I will speak to all of the instruments now, but I will be happy to take questions on each of them in turn. First, I am introducing the regulations under part 14 on the adoption register of the 2014 act. Through the 2014 act, Scotland's adoption register has been placed on a statutory footing. The regulations make detailed provision and connection with the operation of the register. The register provides opportunities for children to be matched with families across Scotland if they cannot be matched locally. Scotland's adoption register has been operating on a non-statutory basis since 2011, and in that time the register has facilitated 255 matches with adoptive families. In moving the register on to a statutory footing, adoptions to the agencies will be required to refer children and adopters. We believe that that will increase the effectiveness of the register in assisting with the adoption process. The draft regulations make provisions in four main areas. Those include the point at which children who ought to be placed for adoption are added to the register, the point at which approved prospective adopters are added to the register, the timeframe for adoption agencies to submit that information, and the circumstances where disclosing information from the register can be authorised. The regulations also specify what information the register is to commit, contain and how the register will be kept up to date. We believe that by requiring all adoption agencies to use the register within defined timescales as set out in these draft regs, the delays with some children face in being matched with adoptive families will be reduced. Moving on to the kinship care assistance Scotland Order 2016, arising from part 13 on support for kinship care of the 2014 act. Under that part, the Scottish Government has placed the duty on local authorities to make arrangements to secure that kinship care assistance is made available to the following specific categories of eligible people. An adult who is applying for a kinship care order, an adult who is considering applying for a kinship care order, an adult with a kinship care order, a child subject to a kinship care order if the relevant eligibility test is met and an eligible child who has reached the age of 16 but who were subject to a kinship care order immediately prior to turning 16 years old. That order makes provision in seven main areas, and those are the manner in which a local authority shall provide kinship care assistance, the types of kinship care assistance that local authorities must or may provide to each category of eligible person, an extension of the definition of eligible child, factors that must be considered in assessing whether a child is at risk of being looked after for the purposes of being an eligible child, the procedure that local authorities must follow when notifying a person who has applied for kinship care assistance, and finally the information that local authorities must publish. We believe that this instrument will ensure that additional support is provided that will assist kinship carers, children and young people in kinship care to provide safe and stable long-term care for children who might otherwise require or continue to require formal care. Next, under parts 4 on the named person and 5 on the child's plan of the act, there are two orders to be introduced. The modification of schedules 2 and 3 order relates to the provisions of information and assistance to named person services, providers and to organisations exercising functions in relation to the child's plan. The order will add the principal reporter to schedules 2 and 3, ensuring that they are subject to the duties of a relevant authority specified in part 4 of the act, and the duties of a listed authority as specified in part 5 of the act. The effect of those additions is that the principal reporter will be required in appropriate circumstances to provide information and assistance to named person service provision providers under part 4 and organisations exercising child's plan functions under part 5. The principal reporter will also receive information from a named person service provider in respect of a child or young person, where that is likely to be relevant to the principal reporter's function as regard that child or young person's wellbeing. Further discussion with the relevant bodies has made clear that those two and three needs to be revised from the existing wording of the 2014 act, which does not include the principal reporter in the list of persons specified as relevant and listed authorities. We have had discussions with the principal reporter, who is content to be added. Turning to part 4 and 5, complaints order. This order covers complaints about the exercise of functions set out in parts 4 and 5. That is the named person and the child's plan. It sets out procedures for resolution of such complaints at a local level and in complementing existing complaints procedures. It allows for escalation to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman in a consistent manner across Scotland. Specifically, the order will cover the following matters. Clarification around what may be the subject of a complaint, who can make a complaint, how the complaint should be made, timescales for the different stages of the complaint's procedure, who should consider the complaint and how the complaint should be considered and investigated, how information can be obtained to support any investigation and finally what should be included in the determination of a complaint. Details of an improved complaint system in relation to the Ombudsman's remit are also specified. Under article 9 of the order, those matters that can be subject to complaints under the order can be investigated by the Ombudsman, who will now have the power to investigate the merits of a decision taken in exercise of a function conferred under parts of the 2014 act. As part of the development of the complaint's procedure, we will be developing and consulting on guidance in the coming months with publications set for early June. We have worked closely with the stakeholders in the development of the order, not least the Ombudsman. I know that the Ombudsman has written to the convener about the order, and it is gratifying that Jim Martin acknowledges the level of co-operation with his office and his support for an approach to complaints based on the SPO's own existing models. We note that he has some reservations about the level of detail about the complaints process in the order. However, as Mr Martin acknowledges, and as the committee knows, the relevant sections of the 2014 act already set out what is required of the complaints process in some detail. It is for ministers to specify the process by order, which is to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. If we had not provided such explicit detail in the draft order but had sought to leave this detail to guidance or to a procedure set out by someone else, we would not have been meeting the intentions of Parliament when it agreed unanimously to those sections, or the wider public's expectations that are robust, but the flexible complaints process will be put in place for such an important policy area. Thank you, convener, for allowing me to make opening remarks on all the orders that we are laying today. I look forward to taking the committee's questions on the first of those. I intend to allow members to ask questions on the kinship care orders first, and then we will move to the vote on that, and then we will ask questions on the name person complaints order, and then we will move to the vote on that. Therefore, we will deal with the kinship care area first, if you do not mind, minister. Do members have any questions on the kinship care assistance to Scotland? Are we talking about the adoption register as well? So, yes, sorry, adoption and kinship first, and then we will deal with the name person. It was less a question convener, it was just an acknowledgement of the reference, the briefing provided that there appears to be a recognition of the need to work very collaboratively north and south of the border in order to maximise the opportunities for making those matches between prospective adopters and children. It was really, I think, to acknowledge that and welcome it, to be honest. I wonder if I may ask about the industry clarification, the revolving door principle, of if one agency says that a person can be a prospective adopter and then subsequently find that they are not acceptable, then that person can then move on to another agency who can then presumably re-register them. I mean, what built-in check is there in terms of making sure that the register reflects the bona fide information regarding prospective adoption? That is the first question, the second question. I sympathise with how you feel. The second question is the security of the data generally in terms of whether it be about the child or a prospective adopter, if we have the possibility or practicality of moving on and off the register. I mean, how is that information secure? What are the penalties if somebody, what are the proposed penalties, if somebody does not abide by the regulation? Okay. Thank you, Mr Brody, for the questions there. We, in relation to the first question there about the checks. I mean, this is something that has to be a dynamic, almost a dynamic piece of kit that allows us to refresh and make amendments to who should be on and off. There isn't any evidence that what you describe is a factor. We will make sure that there are strict parameters in place to protect children. As is always the case, though, those things are always robust. That is also something that has been in place informally since 2011. The issue that you describe has not been an issue or has not been a factor that has been raised. In terms of the security and robustness of the system, the software that has been in place since 2011 is also used by the registers for England and Wales. It has been subject to penetration testing and the security of any future amendment to the system will be subject to the same rigorous test. Access to the data is confined to two members of staff and to those agencies that are directly involved in linking a specific child and family for adoption. The systems that we have in place are fairly robust and fairly well tested. We have confidence that that will remain and be the case as it moves forward. It has always already been in use across other parts of the UK. I have a policy that I am very familiar with, but I wonder if I can just seek some clarity. I, like Liam McArthur, was delighted to see that information contained in the register in Scotland will also appear on adoption registers for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Can I ask if the reverse is also true that information in England, Wales and Northern Ireland appears in Scotland? Can I just ask a second question? It all sounds highly positive. The figures that you gave for the matches 255 did not seem to be very high. Would your expectations be that those matches could be increased, given the implementation of the instrument? In response to the first question that you raised, that information can go both ways. Also, that figure of 255 should be seen in the context of the children that are on the register being harder to place children. That is about making sure that we are given those children the best possible chance of finding a match and finding a nurturing and loving home. While it may seem a low figure when you are saying it in your own remarks, which is not within the context of the numbers and the fact that those kids are a bit harder to place, and that gives them and offers them the best chance, it is about matching and increasing that opportunity for young people. You would expect an increase in numbers given this instrument. I hope that that enables more children to get more places and to get those harder-to-reach and harder-to-place children the home that they deserve. Any other questions on the adoption and register regulations? Minister, I have a couple of questions for myself on the kinship care assistance Scotland order. Can you confirm that the figures with regard to who will be eligible to receive support, what kind of numbers? Is it those who will be who are a formal kinship carer? During the passage of the Children and Young People Bill, the Government said that there were 3,917 children living in formal kinship care. However, the Scottish kinship carer lines say that there are many thousands more who are informal kinship carer at relationships in place. I am just trying to establish that what this is doing is to do with those who are in formal situation rather than the informal. Is that correct? That is for an informal, and it allows those people who are in informal kinship care arrangements to access the support that they require. That is where the difficulty has been, that there have been children in place in an informal sense, but they have not necessarily always had access to the support that they need, even though some of the needs of those children are the same. However, it is also about avoiding those children to end up in the looked-after system where outcomes are poor and it is to try to act in that preventative way, which is the hallmark of those children. So those children who are in an informal kinship carer situation? The eligibility is broad as well that if there is a risk of that child becoming looked after, that could be a way in which the family can access the kinship carer order too. It is based on the needs of the child as well. It is about trying to be as enabling as possible to allow the local authorities to determine whether or not that child on its needs requires that, and that family requires that support for the needs of that child. That is why there has been that kind of broadness and eligibility. Very helpful. My second question is about how the order interacts with the benefit system effectively. Will those allowances be disregarded as income by the benefits system? We are in discussions with the DWP. The difference with the informal kinship carer is that they can be eligible and they can access benefits in a far easier way. That is about us making sure that we have that as clear as we possibly can for those families who are on the margins and who require a seamless way in which they can access the support that they need. So we are in discussions with the DWP currently to make sure that that is the case. Are you hopeful of a successful conclusion to those discussions? Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions on the kinship? Thank you. As indicated, we now move to the formal debate on the Scotland's adoption register regulations 2016 draft and the kinship carer assistance Scotland order 2016 draft, which is item 3. Can I invite the minister to speak to and move the motions? Thank you very much minister. Any contributions from members? Okay thank you. Can I therefore put the question that motion S4M1562, that the Education and Culture Committee recommends that the Scotland's adoption register regulations 2016 draft be approved, be agreed to, are we all agreed? That is agreed. The second question is that motion S4M15454, that the Education and Culture Committee recommends that the kinship carer assistance Scotland order 2016 draft be approved, be agreed to, are we all agreed? That is also agreed. Thank you very much. Can I suspend the meeting briefly to allow the change of panel come? I think that there is, yes. I will suspend briefly. Our next item is to take evidence on two further pieces of subordinate legislation as listed on the agenda. I welcome back Eileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People and our accompanying officials. After we have taken evidence on the instruments, we will debate the motions in the name of the minister, item 5. Again, officials are not permitted to contribute to the formal debate. Minister, I think that you have covered these instruments in your previous remarks. Indeed, yes, okay. Do members have any questions here on this, Mary? Yes. Again, I was not on the committee when the Children and Young People Bill went through. It was my colleague Liz Smith. At the time of the passing, Liz Smith raised some concerns with regard to the implementation of this particular part of the bill. My real concern is that, convener, we cannot ignore the concerns of the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. The first piece of subordinate legislation is implemented in 30 days. This piece of legislation that we are looking at is implemented in August. It seems to me that we have a six-month window of opportunity that I would hope could be used to bring forward changes and to adapt to the concerns of the Ombudsman. I am sure that the minister is familiar with the Ombudsman's concerns, but he asks that a simpler approach be adopted and the approach that is currently being used to modernise social work complaints. He also says that, if that goes through, I think from previous experience, in order to bring a change through Parliament, it can take up to eight years. It is obviously better to try and do that within the next six months. If I can just read rather than me second-guessing his words, I feel that it would be remiss of me not to note that this particular legislative approach of creating the detail of complaints process through regulations is now out of line with other areas. He is suggesting his support for the Government's aim of aligning complaints with the model CHP in operation across the public sector. The minister has taken into account the concerns raised in the Ombudsman's letter to the convener of 23 February. Given that we have six months to implementation, that does not seem to be an unreasonable request. I also think that, given that he is suggesting bringing it in line with other procedures that are already out there, it seems to be a very sensible approach. I am asking the convener if that can be delayed, if we can have a look at it again and use the time prior to implementation to take on board what appears to be the very reasonable request by the Ombudsman, who I think has got more experience of a complaints procedure than anyone around this table. We have been working closely with the SPSO since the passage of the act in 2014, where all parties agreed to the amendments that I moved that set out that this would be for ministers to set out the regulation. Again, we have been working hard to make sure that there is an alignment with current and existing policies of complaint. However, this one starts from a different place given the amendments that were passed and agreed to by everyone in 2014. It is important to note that the Children and Young People Act plays duties and responsibilities on Scottish ministers to develop and implement a complaints procedure for parts 4 and 5 and set out the issues that we might want to take forward in secondary legislation. That is what I said and what I bring today and what I have done. As I said, we have worked hard with the SPSO. We have taken on board the concerns and issues that have been raised and tried to make sure that what we have within the regulation that we are setting before us is in alignment with other complaints procedures and puts in place something that is clear, transparent and allows families to access the redress if they need to. I would urge the committee to not delay in taking forward this piece of regulation and be cognisant of the fact that, even though there is six months, the Parliamentary timetable would put some pressure on meeting our August deadline. The minister fairly reminds us that this was the collective will of Parliament in passing the act. In fact, it may have been remissive of the ombudsman not to highlight at that stage concerns about the process that has been adopted. Nevertheless, we are presented with a suggestion that the complaints process being put through in terms of regulations is, as Mary Scanlon says, out of line with other areas in the public sector. Although six months is not an enormous amount of time, it may be prudent of the committee to at least allow some of that time to be used to establish whether or not there is a way of bringing complaints processes in that regard in line with practice. It may well be that adhering to the views that are expressed through the original act remains the desired outcome, but it seems to me that the ombudsman is making a fair and reasonable point and that, with the time available, we are exploring that in final order. My concern would be that, if we change that as per the ombudsman's suggestion, I am being in mind that what we have put before you today is to be as reflective as we possibly can be of existing complaints processes and procedures and routes. If we were to go down the route that you are suggesting, we might have to change the act that we passed, which put onus on Scottish ministers to come forward with the regulation and the parameters by which somebody could take a complaint. I would hesitate to say that that would be something that would be desirable and in direct contrast urge you to go and consider that we do pass the regulation today because it would put in jeopardy the existing starting date for August. Bear in mind that we have, if alignment is the issue and given his SPSO's recent media statement, which says that this is a technical minor concern, then what we have is something that is in alignment with other existing regulation complaints procedures. We think that we have mitigated the concerns that he has raised. I think that the minister has been perfectly reasonable, and the ombudsman has been perfectly reasonable. Obviously, there are concerns about the volume of legislation that passes through secondary legislation, but we have an opportunity here, both in terms of the six-month pay before implementation, but in terms of the committee meetings that we have before we rise for part, we have an opportunity to come back to that. Would it be reasonable to have the committee to request further discussion between the ombudsman and the Scottish Government and for us to reconsider that at one of our later meetings later this month? I am simply asking whether or not we have an opportunity before the end of this session to come back to this and pass it. As I said, I do not think that the minister has been unreasonable in what she is suggesting. If having passed the act, it actually transpires that the ombudsman may be correct in what he is saying, but that needed to be brought to us in evidence during the passage of the bill, in which case we just proceed as proposed by the Scottish Government. However, if there is an opportunity to align this better with other areas of the process in the public sector, it would seem remiss of us not to at least explore that. Is it aligned? It is aligned. It has been developed and designed to be aligned with existing complaints procedures. Again, the substantive issue is that this is not aligned. What we have endeavoured to do is to make sure that this is aligned with existing complaints procedures and has been developed in collaboration and in conversation and dialogue with the SPSO. If that is the substantive issue, I am giving some reassurance that what we have in place is transparent and flexible. We will have the potential to have the scrutiny of the Parliament, but it is fulfilling what I set out in the amendments that I passed during the passage of the act, which was supported by everyone in the Parliament. It is an important part of the name person procedure in that we give families access to a complaints process, should they need to take it. Can I just say that I am not asking for a delay? Quite often we get legislation and it is already through and quite often we get about 30 days and that is fine, but in this case, convener, we actually have six months. It is not due to be implemented until the 31st of August. Can I put on the record that I am not asking for a delay? I am asking that the six months be used in order to have discussions with the ombudsman. I have a difficulty because I am no expert on complaints resolution. I am not sure what any of us are, but we have the minister saying that it is in line with other complaints resolution across the public sector. I quote from the ombudsman's letter to you that it is now out of line with other areas. I think that we have such a significant difference in opinion, interpretation or whatever. I just cannot put my hand on heart and put this through today. All I am asking, convener, is that the six months be used in order that reasonable negotiations and understanding are taken forward to make sure that this is right and fit for purpose on the dates implemented. Is it a matter for the Government to decide whether or not they wish to take this away and revise it and bring it back, but that is a matter for the Government? Again, I reiterate that we have developed this to be in alignment with existing procedures so that it avoids duplication and unnecessary messiness that we all want to avoid. The fact is that the act and the amendments that we moved during the passage of the act drive it in a slightly different way to other areas of complaints such as the social work complaints procedures that others have mentioned. Regardless of whether we passed it now or three months down the line, the issue is what the act and what we agreed as a Parliament to take forward. That is what we have developed to be in alignment with other existing complaints procedures to allow it and offer families the opportunity to take forward complaints should they need to and deliver them that transparency. The commitment that I gave and the commitment that we all wanted and we all shared to ensure that we are delivering for families in this area of policy. I have a couple. During the scrutiny of the children and young people bill, the committee corresponded with a member of the public who raised concerns based on her own experience about the information sharing provisions. Specifically, she wanted to ensure that information shared about a child must be relevant, proportionate and in line with the principles of the data protection act. She also suggested that, in her experience, teachers and healthcare professionals were not properly trained on the DPA and that there was a tendency to share everything without checking or asking whether it was relevant. She also suggested that the professionals do not think to inform parents before sharing information about their child. In light of that correspondence that the committee has received, will disputes about disproportionate sharing of information or sharing of irrelevant information fall within the scope of making a complaint? Yes, the information sharing will be part of the complaints procedure. How will you ensure that decision makers are properly trained, given the comments that I have just made, to make the correct judgments about what information to share? Would you expect specific guidelines to be established at organisation level on the types of information that should be shared? Part of the act, and I remember it, but when we went through the process of passing the bill, was around making sure that the workforce who will be required to be named person are trained and properly trained in how to share information appropriately. The complaint that is raised in that letter, the legislation that we passed two years ago, provides a robust framework to ensure that information is shared in the most appropriate and proportionate way, avoiding the unnecessary scattergun approach that has unfortunately happened in the past. The bill strengthens and the complaints procedure will allow if people feel that there has been a breach that they will be able to take forward, notwithstanding their existing local complaints procedures that they can go through before they get to this stage. The final question is given the concerns that have been expressed in this piece of correspondence, and I am sure that it is shared by at least some other parents. Do you agree that it is important to inform parents before information is shared about their child, and what more can be done to ensure that that actually happens? I do recognise that in some circumstances, of course, that may not be appropriate in particular difficult situations, but outwith that. Absolutely, and the bill in the act that we passed is sites that parents and families should be part of the decision making process. Guidance will ensure that the best practice that is always to work with families about information sharing is followed. Within the guidance and in the act, we are providing rigor to ensure that families are very much fully involved with any information that requires to be shared. Okay, thank you very much. As indicated, we now move to the formal debate on the Children and Young People of Scotland Act 2014, part 4 and part 5, complaints order 2016 draft, and the Children and Young People of Scotland Act 2014 modification of schedules 2 and 3, order 2016 draft, which is item 5. I invite the minister to speak to and move the motions. Any contributions from members at this stage? Okay. Therefore, I put the question that motion S4M-15464, that the Education and Culture Committee recommends that the Children and Young People of Scotland Act 2014, part 4 and part 5, complaints order 2016 draft, be approved, be agreed to, are we all agreed? We're not all agreed, therefore there'll be a division. Therefore, can I ask those wishing to support the order, please indicate now? Okay, thank you. Those against? Abstentions. The result on the division on the part 4, part 5, complaints order that the order is agreed to, there were seven votes, four no votes against and one abstention. So, S4M-15464 is agreed to. Can I therefore put the question that motion S4M-1546, that the Education and Culture Committee recommends that the Children and Young People of Scotland Act 2014 modifications of schedules 2 and 3, order 2016 draft, be approved, be agreed to, are we all agreed? Yes. We are all agreed. Thank you very much. Can I suspend the meeting briefly to allow the minister to leave the table? The final item is to consider five pieces of subordinate legislation as listed on the agenda. Do members have any comments on the instruments? No, thank you very much. Therefore, I know it's only a couple of weeks left, colleagues, but let's just finish this one. Does the committee agree to make no recommendation to the Parliament on the instruments? That's agreed. Thank you very much, therefore I close the meeting.