Can I welcome everyone to the 15th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2018? Can I please remind everyone present to turn their mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item of business is a decision on whether to take agenda item 3 in private. Is everyone content that agenda item 3 is taking private? The next item of business is an evidence session on widening access. The committee has previously undertaken a visit to the Royal Conservatoire to discuss widening access with a number of higher education institutions. It has also taken evidence from the Commission for Fair Access and the Minister for Further Education and Higher Education and Science. Can I welcome to this meeting Professor Sir Ian Diamond, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, Professor Craig Mahoney, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland, Professor Geoffrey Sharkey, Principal Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Alas The Sim director of the University of Scotland and Susan Stewart director of the Open Universities in Scotland. Before I invite questions from my colleagues, I'd like to invite Alas The Sim to make a brief opening statement, please. Thank you for your invitation to give evidence today and to make an opening statement. Every leader of a Scottish higher education institution is thoroughly committed to widening access to higher education. This is a value that is intrinsic to Scottish higher education and we have welcomed the high cross-party priority that politicians have given it. The Commission on Widening Access set a new level of challenge for all parts of the education system, with a vision for equal access to higher education that the Fair Access Commissioner described in his annual report as among the most ambitious in the world. We are rising to our part of that challenge. In November 2017, University of Scotland published Working to Widen Access, setting out our programme of action to take forward the commissioners recommendations. This includes a review nationally and institutionally of admissions policy and practice, and institutions are examining the entrance requirements for every single course to set minimum entry requirements that open these courses to people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds who have the ability to succeed. Each institution is also re-examining its contextual admissions policy to ensure that candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds whose exam results may not reflect their full potential are given special consideration. We are also looking at widening the categories of applicants given special consideration by all institutions, for instance to include learners eligible for free school meals or education maintenance allowance. Articulation from college to university can be a powerful tool for widening access, and already the majority of people who continue in the same subject area from college to university get full credit for their college achievements. Every institution is considering how to drive this further. We've also set up a joint project with Colleges Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council to break down any national level barriers, for instance to examine how to achieve better curricular match between higher national qualifications in university in subjects where people from college are not currently getting full credit. Importantly, we're also looking at the language we use to communicate about admissions policy and practice, and we'll work with learners and their advisers on that. At the moment, it can be precise but opaque and varies between institutions. We want to create clear and consistent language about admissions. All our actions need to support true lifelong learning. We're pleased that the commissioner and the Scottish Government have recognised that mature learners are included within the commission on widening access's targets. We also need to ensure that par time learners, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds and with demanding care responsibilities, are seen as core to wide access. A written evidence summarises progress. We're already closing in on a target that at least 16% of entrants should come from the 20% most deprived backgrounds. 14.8% of entrants came from SIMD 20 areas in 2015-16. All our diverse institutions are pulling their weight, and if you apply to university from an SIMD 20 background, you are now as likely to get offered a place as your more privileged peers. Full achievement of our national ambitions on wide access will require joined up action across government and multiple levels of education. For instance, we need to measure success intelligently, recognising that the majority of income deprived people live outside the most deprived areas as measured by SIMD. We need to ensure that as we widen access for the most socio-economically deprived, we don't lose sight of the need to be fair to learners from all other backgrounds, many of whom have their own challenges. As a commissioner noted, the critical issue is to increase qualified applicants from deprived backgrounds. There is still a stark poverty-related attainment gap. The latest information we have from the Scottish Government shows only 20% of school leavers from the most deprived desile, with three or more hires that are equivalent compared to 70% of the most privileged school leavers. We're pleased that the commissioner intends now to look at how schools can contribute to the national ambitions, and we will welcome this committee's insight into how Government, schools, colleges and the university sector can best meet these shared ambitions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Liz, you've got a question. I wonder if I could concentrate on the ability of schools to be part of this widening access process. We're living in an age where, obviously, it is increasingly difficult for domiciled Scots to get a place at university because of the fact that the demand so exceeds the supply in the cap system. That then determines that the school qualifications that they have are exceptionally important, particularly for those who come from deprived backgrounds. We've seen evidence last week from Professor Jim Scott that there is a diminishing number of advanced hire courses that are being offered to those from deprived backgrounds. We're also seeing that of the 360 schools that he did an investigation into, over half of them have reduced their subject choice in S4. That is a very serious problem. Would the panel be able to give their views on how we can address this, particularly for those students from the disadvantaged backgrounds for whom we want to raise aspiration? It's fine in terms of raising that aspiration, but only if we can give them the facility to undertake the courses that they need. I'll answer briefly. I think that colleagues may have experienced, for instance, on supply people doing music at school that they may wish to draw on. It really does have to be a whole system effort. Briefly, on advanced hires, universities are very conscious that the availability of advanced hires is patchy across the education system. Now there are things that universities are doing to assist that. For instance, advanced hire hubs allow access to university facilities for people studying advanced hire. There are initiatives in the country of joint work between school, college and university to increase the availability of advanced hire. Nonetheless, it is still patchy, which is why the offers that universities make to candidates are principally based on hire because of the limits on available advanced hire and the fact that advanced hire availability tends to be concentrated in the most privileged areas. On a subject choice, this has been a matter of significant debate. We are reliant on people coming up through the school system with a sufficient range of qualifications enabled to get into the most selective courses. Of course, there are discontinuities. For instance, you are coming into university to study ancient history. However, you may not be required to have a lot of prior experience of that at school because it just is not very much of it at school. We do our best to meet learners of where they are, but nonetheless we are reliant on a supply chain of people with a reasonably wide range of qualifications at school level. Pursue that line, Mr Sim. The advanced hire is seen as Scotland's best qualification by many educationists, not just in Scotland but internationally and south of the border. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that the access to that advanced hire, particularly in some schools that may be in rural areas that cannot take advantage of the hubs, is able to develop their courses so that the youngsters who we are wanting to attract to university but who currently do not have the choice are able to do so. Would you acknowledge that we have to do much more at the school level to ensure that those qualifications are readily available to all pupils who we feel have the potential to be able to do the advanced hire and, therefore, to improve their admissions to university? That would be great. I should have said before that Liz started the question. Can I ask both that we make the questions short and the answers as successful as possible because we do have a lot to get through today? I mean, I think that would be great. I think that's acknowledged also in the Scottish Government's Learner Journey report last week, which identified wider availability of advanced hires as something to work for. I want to just mention the Young Applicants and Secondary Schools programme, which is run by Open University and has been going for 10 years. This year, we've got 1,100 six-year students throughout Scotland who are taking the YAS programme. It really is Scotland's only nation-wide school-to-university bridging programme. It's not an alternative to advanced hires, but it is a widening access initiative. My final question is to Professor Sharkey. When we visited the Royal Conservatoire, you made a very interesting point about the Conservatoire's 100 per cent commitment to widening access into diversity, but you said specifically that in schools there is not the best potential in some schools for pupils to do music and the art subjects. Could you comment on that a bit further? Yes. In fact, after this meeting, I'm heading to West Lothian to meet with City Council leadership there to urge them to see if we can partner to keep string provision alive in the area. You have to start certain art forms very young at primary school. If you don't start strings in primary school, if you don't start ballet in primary school, then you will be too late to even begin to approach the level that you would need to study at the Royal Conservatoire. Further than that, we want to make the case in partnership with all parties and with government that the country will benefit from the creative learning that access to the performing arts provides. Physical education is statutory, but performing arts isn't, so we're saying you must exercise the body, but what about the critical need to exercise creativity and the imagination that performing arts provides? So we want to work in partnership, but yes, we will be worried about the pipeline and our ability to attract students from the most disadvantaged areas, whether we measure it by SAMD or whether we measure it by rural deprivation. It will become harder to do if the provision doesn't stay accessible and, if not free, but certainly affordable for young people in the country. I want to make a brief point about advanced hires, first of all, and then a more substantive point. In a situation where a young person from more deprived areas is less likely to be able to sit five or six hires in the fifth year, access to advanced hires becomes really important. What we are now in a situation is where not only is a young person from a poorer background less likely to be able to do a good group of hires in the fifth year, they are also not going to access advanced hires, and even if they do, you have just said that universities are going to count hires more. That surely is unacceptable. Is there a long-term plan to make a decision about which qualification matters most? Is it the advanced hire? Is it the hire? Which of those should it be, and how do we then make sure that young people from more deprived backgrounds have access to those? I would also make the point that, for a lot of young people, their first year at university is a repeat of what they have done in their advanced hires. In circumstances where perhaps young people have less access to income, that again is not the best use of their time and resource. How do we resolve that dilemma? Could I possibly, for any of my colleagues, give the real expert practitioner view, just on the statistical level? It is important to note that there are really very few students coming to university with a good clutch of advanced hires at one moment. Truly learned journey view, I think, is around a 5 per cent rate. That reflects the low availability of advanced hires. Recognising a senior phase is one in which learners are often taking hires over multiple years. I think that universities have engaged with that and increasingly recognise that the accumulation of qualifications over the multiple years of a senior phase is something that is valued for entry requirements. My colleagues are more expert on that than any of them. Can I maybe give you a direct example of the challenge that we have got? I have been interested in your solution to that. There is a young woman who has a good clutch of hires, which she would be considered and has been given offers for universities down south. She does not live in an SIMD area, but her family income is 11,000 a year. She cannot get access to university in Scotland because the qualification is higher because, in my view, we are rationing places at university because of the cap. We are rationing by qualification in circumstances where young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to be able to reach that. She cannot go to university down south because she cannot afford to live away from home. What do we do? She does not get a contextualised offer. In circumstances where universities are giving multiple offers to some young people who qualify for a contextualised place, the young woman cannot access a place at all. If she does at all, she will have to go down south. How can that possibly be a rational way of dealing with the whole question of access to higher education for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds? That is an incredibly difficult circumstance. One of the things that points to is the need to measure deprivation intelligently. If we are simply being tasked with meeting targets on a basis of SIMD, we know that the target is not university's action because university's action should be for everyone who has deprivation characters, but we know that targets do not make sense. If they are excluding, as the authors of SIMD themselves say, about two-thirds of the people who are income deprived, we really need to be looking much more intelligently at the indicators of who needs that special treatment. I said the issues round, and I have spoken to this before, about the density of disadvantage, even if you yourself are in that community and are not disadvantaged, and that has an impact on the school that you go to and so on. However, what representations have been made simply to address the very simple question. A young woman who comes from a family with income is 11,000 a year, and she does not get a contextualised offer, surely we could change that by the end of the summer. Can I comment in reference to the University of the West of Scotland? I do not know the example that you are referring to, but I can assure you that at my university, when students apply to the university, we are looking at their capability to complete the degree. Whether they come with advanced hires, whether they come with hires or whether they do not come with any qualifications, it is the capacity that they can demonstrate that they can complete the award on the basis on which we would offer them a place. I am very happy to look at the application that you are referring to and consider whether they should be eligible for UWS place. Can I also say at the University of Aberdeen that we are not in a position where we can simply use SIMD data and we simply do not. I see Richard Lochhead's here. If we look in Murray, there is one SIMD postcode that would fit within the definition of disadvantaged. Richard, I think that we might both agree that Murray is a very beautiful place, but it is not a bastion of privilege right across the place. Therefore, at the University of Aberdeen, we have to look at a broader level of disadvantage. We do that by looking at a wider range of where the school is, what the income level is, whether it is the first generation from a household to go to university. We make contextualised admissions to anyone, regardless of their geography, who we believe has that opportunity. I really cannot speak to the case that you have just described, but my own view would be that, if this person were in the catchment area of the University of Aberdeen, because I recognise that this young person wishes to live at home, then, as Professor Mahoney has said, we would be prepared to look at them. However, you also raised one other point, which I personally agree with. If we have a cap on the number of places, there has to be restriction and qualifications are the only way that we have at the moment of making a decision, other than also, as we do very passionately at the University of Aberdeen and I know what the universities do, using contextualised admissions were appropriate. That is exceptionally helpful, but would it be reasonable to ask Alasdair Simn that the good practice by the University of West Scotland should be, we should not be relying on good practice by individual universities to make up our numbers? Is it reasonable to say to universities across the board that it should take the same approach that incomes should be part of a contextualised application, or are you restricted by government policy in doing that? I think that we, as a university sector, are determined to make sure that we are using indicators that make sense, and that is why our admissions working group is now looking at how do we extend beyond SIMD and care experienced candidates to recognise across the sector indicators of disadvantage that should be taken into consideration for admissions. For instance, we are getting data from the Scottish Government on free school meals, education maintenance, allowance entitlement, which may be more robust indicators. Income, I can see the rationale for. I think that there are problems at the moment about actually getting access to income data before people apply to universities. I think that there is a bit of systems thinking needed before income itself can necessarily be used as an indicator. However, we need to look across the sector at having an intelligent range of indicators of who is disadvantaged. Is there a related issue for young people, for example, wanting to do medicine from a poorer background? They come from Glasgow and are offered a place in Aberdeen but not in Glasgow, and it is impossible for them to take it up because the cost is so much. I wonder whether universities have thought about that, too, in relation to thinking about their contextualised offers in those kinds of courses. I can speak to the University of Aberdeen. I take your point, and it is very difficult. That is one of the reasons why we have offered a year of free accommodation to people from disadvantaged backgrounds, because we recognise that, while fees may be free, it costs serious money to go to university, and people are getting into debt in order to be there, first point, and it is often credit card debt, which is bad debt in my view. In addition, people are working very long hours in paid employment alongside their studies, and we believe that is not great because we are passionate about the co-curriculum and people are engaging with everything about being at university and growing as an active citizen. There are real challenges, and, frankly, it comes down there to money to enable people to live away from home. On admissions, we know that the admissions process, particularly for those who do not have a family background in higher education, can be quite daunting. Alasdor Senn mentioned his opening remarks and the improvements that we can get in outcomes in terms of admissions from strong contextualised admissions processes. That is welcome, but it adds an extra layer to the process. I wonder what your institutions do to ensure that, particularly for those individuals coming from backgrounds where they would be able to take advantage of contextualised admissions policy, how to make that as understandable as possible for both the applicant and those supporting them, whether they are school staff or their family. How do we make sure that this is a process, this extra layer of policy, is something that is clearly understood? Can I just say that that is an incredibly... Can I just say that is a really important question? It is incredibly important to recognise the amount of work that universities across Scotland are doing with schools. We at the University of Aberdeen run an access Aberdeen initiative where we work with disadvantaged... whole set of schools which have progression rates of lower than 30% right across the north and northeast of Scotland. We give people individual support, support about goings university, support about with applications. I can say, for example, in the access to medicine part of that, current medical students will go and do practice interviews with intending medical students so that we will do everything we can to give people a fair opportunity and to enable them to negotiate, which is the first time you've ever done it, a challenging bureaucracy. We are an ensemble of schools. Everything we do, it might be an acting group, a dance group, an orchestra. You have to have people that can work together. We want to engage early. We want to raise aspiration early. The goal is to have not only access, but access that leads to progression. Within the Conservatoire, we have a programme that we're grateful that the Scottish Funding Council supports called Transitions, where we try to identify from primary school age young people in deprived areas that would benefit from specific music, dance, drama, or production training. We work with them, we mentor them, we give them practice auditions with the goal being that, by the time they reach the age of 17 for dance or 18 for all the other things, they would be at the right level. Through Focus West, we work with a number of low schools from deprived areas, and we have a strong partnership there, again, raising aspiration, but it is all about discrete engagement at an early level, and we're continuing to work to get better at it. Going back to Johann Lamont's question, one worry that I have is that with the extreme focus on SIMD-20, similar to Syrian Diamond here, that doesn't help us with our traditional music course, which is largely from world deprived areas. We have a number of people from SIMD-40 in our transitions programme that, frankly, we will have to winnow out to keep focusing more on the 20 so that we can meet those advanced targets. There are consequences by the way that you measure it, but overall early access and progression is what we're after. Sorry, there was a couple of them.  It's just a brief supplementary to Ian. You mentioned working with schools in your area. Did that approach—I realise that there will be historical elements to this that go back a long way—largely happened through the education authorities, or do you use an institution engaged on a school-by-school basis? In partnership with the education authorities, but within the schools on a school-by-school basis—and, of course, there are—what I am passionate about is that we don't identify—I'm exaggerating slightly for effect—one school, which is in a really disadvantaged area, and every university in the area is in supporting that school, and we're not everywhere else. We do try to make sure that, where we're working, for example, our good friends at Robert Gordon's are not working so hard, and we make sure that people have the opportunity to choose university, not simply to come to Aberdeen. Thank you. Ross Hughes says that you've got a very brief supplementary on this. Thank you, convener. Just a very brief supplementary to what Professor Sharkey said there. You mentioned going out and raising aspiration a couple of times, and I wonder if you would agree that it's important to acknowledge that folk from deprived or less fortunate backgrounds, it's not lack of aspiration that's preventing them going to university often, that it's the structural barriers in their way, the complexity of application processes, money, things like that. I just wondered if you might like to clarify that. Yes, I agree, but what we want to show is that someone from any background, we also are interested in ethnic diversity increase, could imagine themselves on that stage, so we're trying to reach them earlier to say that this could be really exciting and for you. Right, thank you very much, Richard Leonard. Thank you, and Professor Ian Diamond kind of goes up my question, which was about the use of the 20 per cent most deprived areas in measuring success of learning access. I very much welcome the comments on that. To what extent are you able to go into rural areas and encourage people to apply to go to university, because if I were to live in a very remote area, I would think of the transport difficulties, I think about the expense of having to move to the city to pay for the accommodation, and I think what an enormous expense and what a lot of hassle in obstacles are in my way, and I just wondered how you proactively go out there into those areas that don't count as part of the 20 per cent, but are still people living in deprived areas to encourage them to apply in the first place. Thank you very much, and I just think that that is one of the most important questions, because if we look at Shetland, Orkney, Highland, Murray, Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen city, that's 46 per cent of the geography of Scotland, but only 17 per cent of the post codes and only 4 per cent of those post codes are from disadvantaged areas, so we need to be much broader. The point that I would make about encouraging is one that I would agree with Professor Sharkey.  We're in schools for a long time getting those aspirations up and making it seem that this is something that you can do, and I take the point about bureaucracy, I take the point about money. It's incredibly important, but we also, so we're working in schools, we also run an access summer school because it's important to get people on to campus and know what it's like to be in a university environment and that access summer school for disadvantaged pupils. We say, look, if you do well on that, we'll give you a place for sure, but we just have to recognise that in places like Tareff and Afford, it is about working with people and offering them the opportunity that you can come and I'm always proud that every year we get one or two people coming from places like Kinloch Shield, in which it was only 65 people in that secondary school, but the fact that they've got enough aspiration to come to University of Aberdeen, we're incredibly proud to welcome them, but I also say that it is incredibly important when people have made that enormous journey that we do everything we can as a university to welcome them and give them a sense of belonging early on. Widening access is great, but it's useless if it's accompanied by drop out. Widening access has to be, in my opinion, about widening achievement and I'll come back and I'll just say it one more time. If I may, I do think that money is incredibly important here and money to be able to get the full benefits from higher education and that's why in a review that I did before the Government of Wales, the recommendation that we had was a means-tested grant to people which, for those with the most disadvantaged background, was 30 weeks at 35 hours at the national living wage and that has been implemented by the Welsh Government and you will see an increase in the access for people with disadvantaged backgrounds through that. Professor Mahoney, you wanted to come in. Specifically on the last question, but working backwards on previous comments made as well, the University of West Scotland, as you probably know, has a footprint in Dumfries. It's a generally rural setting, apologies Oliver, and we recruit widely from that area by doing all sorts of outreach activities, but you make the point which I'd like to reiterate. We recruit students in Stranraer who cannot by public transport arrive at the campus before nine o'clock because of the restrictions on the availability of public transport, so we've accommodated our curriculum to be able to allow those people to attend. In case of the other campuses that we have, we do a lot of outreach work and in the same way as Professor Dym has just been referring, things such as summer schools, we run a NASA partnership programme every year in Renfrewshire, Clydebank and East Renfrewshire, bringing in over 250 students on to the university campus to participate in an astronaut programme with experiments which eventually go into space. The reason we do that is because we know that breaking down barriers about being on a university campus is something that helps widen access. Additionally, we're involved in a partner of the children's university concept, in fact I think we are now the largest partner provider of children's university activity in Scotland. We developed our own We University last year, which is a concept for pre-school children to be involved in university access. All attempting to break down the barriers of access and see university as a natural progression for those who desire to get a qualification at that level. Thank you. I am sure that we don't require any educational, formal educational qualifications before you come to the open university, which means that pre-entry advice and guidance is utterly critical in order to ensure that students are choosing the correct curriculum to maximise their chances of success. On SIMD 20, I would echo what my colleague said, whilst our national figure is 17 per cent of students from SIMD 20 areas, a quarter of our students are from rural and remote Scotland, often because they don't go full-time to traditional campus universities because of some of the challenges that have been mentioned. However, 40 per cent of our students in Glasgow come from SIMD 20, so it's a very variable picture. In relation to maintenance grants, I would say that, while the review of student finance was interesting, it was disappointing to us that they chose not to deal with part-time students. That's something that the Welsh Government, in relation to the Diamond review, has dealt with. They have given parity to part-time provision as well as full-time. I want to say that, in terms of reaching the outer hebrides and other places, we have been trying to pioneer some digital work. I think that the committee saw a couple of students, one from South US and another from Islay, who, three weeks out of the month—this is pre-HE—we engage with using a programme called e-staccato, which uses Google Hangouts so it's not too high-end. It's possible to get to, and then, once a month, they make the longer journey. That combination we found to be very effective in reaching more people. Can I just say that Google Hangouts might not sound high-end to you, but it's a complete mystery to me, George. I'm sorry, Richard, you come back in. My apologies. Perhaps you can just very brief answers. It's kind of been touched upon in terms of the maintenance grants, but if you achieve your targets and clearly people from the private backgrounds will still have their challenges in life, so that means that more support might have to be made available in the future once you get your targets. How has that been calculated? Is that a correct thing? Is that an issue? Is that being built into your response? Can I just ask a question to you? Do you by which do you mean that the support when they get to university is incredibly important? It's something that we talk about a lot. The first real evidence on this came from the University of Glasgow, who showed that if you gave extra support during first semester to people from disadvantaged backgrounds, then after that they achieved at the same level as everybody. That extra support, which is something that I first proposed in some work that I did at the University of St Andrews in 1978, is incredibly important. How do you pay for it? You pay for it because you're committed to making it happen, and there is no extra funding for it, but it is, in my opinion, incredibly important that we give that extra support. It's about giving people a sense of belonging, giving people a sense of progression, and making them feel that they should be at the institution. That first semester is incredibly important, and it's something that we work very hard on at the University of Aberdeen, but that's not to say that it's not also worked on very hard at many other universities across Scotland. I just want to say that the funding for this is really wrapped up into the overall teaching grant for Scottish universities. The case that we make to the Scottish Government for sustainable funding of teaching at universities is that you're not just paying for teaching, you're paying for all the wraparound support, you're paying for the extra work to make sure that people are supported to achieve their full potential at university, you're paying for the mental health support, you're paying for extra pastoral care. As we become more and more ambitious for including a wider range of people from disadvantaged backgrounds, it really becomes more and more important that our teaching is funded at a level that enables us to offer the best support that we can to people who are often coming from quite difficult backgrounds. I've got two questions, but I'll just sneak another one in, just in the back of what Richard did, two plus a sneaky one. Basically, I just wanted to ask Craig Mahoney in particular. You've done a lot of this work in supporting students, because you knew there was a drop-off rate, because you might be just explaining to us that we've got it on the record, the successes and the challenges that you've faced, why we've been doing that. As a supporter of the university locally, I'm very appreciative of your continued liaison with us. UWS, as you probably know from your own data, widens access very well. Almost 30 per cent of our student body is comprised of students who come from MD20 backgrounds, and over 50 per cent of our students come from MD40 backgrounds. Something the university is very proud of, and we continue to expand those numbers in an effort to be sure that we can transform lives in the way that we think we do very effectively. In recent years, our progression rates have been challenging. We've had students who have not completed the award they came for, and whilst on the face of it that looks as though that's a failure, we're quite clear that those students who do come to university, even if they engage with and experience only a modest amount of time there, and may leave without a formal qualification, are still also transforming their lives. Quite often what we find is that some of our early exit students are leaving because they find employment, so they came to university to get a qualification, but if employment comes along, quite often their sense of responsibility is that the employment is more important than getting the qualification, so they jump, and so our data, particularly on honours graduates, is that we only have about 50 per cent of our students who go on to do a final year and get an honours degree, and that's mainly because they can get employment at the end of third year with a past degree and go into that employment. To improve our retention, which is now easy for me to refer to drop out, our drop out rates reduced itself by nearly 17 per cent over the last few years. In other words, we're keeping students in the system much more effectively than previously, and that's come about by improving our own systems, being more careful in the students that we encourage to come to university and making the right choices for them and us in allowing them on to courses. Ensuring that our induction programmes are finessed in a way that enables them to create partnerships and friendships early on, explains to them the systems and structures of the university on their arrival so that they're able to navigate the many complex pathways which exist in the university for anybody regardless of their age. Improving our in-house system, so we've created what I often liken to floor walkers that you'll find in John Lewis, where when you enter John Lewis somebody will come and say to you, can I help you? What would you like to do? And we have staff now whose responsibility it is following a pilot scheme to identify students who appear to be struggling in whatever form that may be. It could be lost in terms of finding directions, it may be finance, it may be personal circumstances and trying to pick those things up more rapidly along the way. We've improved our personal tutor system and there's a variety of other systems and techniques we've put in place at a cost. And the point that Alistair was making is that the wraparound fee that we get covers many things, not just teaching. I'd like to also add that within that and some years back the university in response to a government request widened the number of students that it takes. So we have almost a thousand students now on our portfolio, a portfolio of 18,800 students, that's a head count. We have nearly a thousand students who are what are called fees only. I'm sure that's a familiar term to you, but if it's not, we have 994 students who the government pays us £1,820 compared to an average fee for the remaining students in Scottish and EU of around £6,500,000. Now that creates a shortfall, if you like, of nearly £4.6 million in our income to deliver the support to the widening access and other students in the university. I merely make that as a point, I'm not complaining, but I merely make that as a point to help you understand why UWS is doing what it's doing in the way in which it does it. John Swinney said that it fits into what was going to be my main question. When we are looking at widening access, we are looking at bringing people into university that don't have a family history of going to university. I know that UWS is a very peculiar, particular way of doing it, but how do we get to that stage where we get beyond that barrier, that engagement, where we get beyond that barrier of university is no for me? When mum and dad haven't been, the support's not there. How do we get it down to that very basic way of being able to access that young person, get them to go to university? They may have the talent, they may have the ability, but how do we make sure we get there? I'll just kick off, if I may, and then pass on to other colleagues. It's exactly the right question, if I may say so, but there is no one answer. If there was a magic bullet, we'd all have fired it. The bottom line is that there's a mass of things that we have to do. I've talked already about engagement with schools from an early age, about bringing young people and their parents on to campus. Craig has already talked about children's university. We do that simply for that reason, to bring their parents and them on to campus at an early age and say, you could be here too. This is an opportunity for you. Navigating the bureaucracy has to be incredibly important. Having a strategy that says we will help you with your applications is also important, but critically, and it comes back to the point that Liz Smith made right at the beginning, the schools have to be engaged with this. Careers advice in schools has to be saying you could go to university in exactly the same way as I was shocked 45, 50 years ago, whenever it was, when somebody at my school said that I could go to university. Now, that is something we need to make the norm. So my answer is there's no magic bullet here. We've got to be doing everything that we've been talking about so far. Craig. To get through it, I can ask that the answers are much more succinct. Thank you. I think there are many examples in following on from Professor Diamond's commentary about how we're all trying to do this, similar to me, similar to him. Rather, I went to university merely because my brother went, and we were very competitive. So there are lots of stories about first-in family, and we still have a huge number of graduates from UWS who are first-in family. I think the question which we need to ask as well is what is the purpose of universities, and many of us will have differing opinions about that. I think it is changing, but many people come to university now because they're seeking a qualification to transform their lives to enter a workforce in which they want to work. But there are many routes into work, and I think we just need to remain sensitive to that fact that universities are not the only pathways to work. There are also direct entry, there are FE colleges, and there are also universities. I just wanted to pick up on a point made by Professor Mahoney, because I think I've maybe missed the point that you were making around financing. You're saying that the Scottish Government asked you to expand the number of students coming by £1,000, but they fund them at £1,500 a head, and then you mentioned a figure of £6,000, and I wonder if you just clarify what that means. Okay, others can correct me where I get this wrong, but the average fee that the Scottish Government pays for students is £6,500. Most of our students are bringing with them a stipend from the Scottish Government of £6,500. However, there are nearly 1,000 students that we have, which the Scottish Government only pays us £1,820, not £1,500, but £1,820. It creates a difference between, and these students aren't identified, it creates a difference between the fee that we're getting for most students compared to a group of students which are being funded at a lower rate. We did that because the Government was seeking to widen access, and as a university that has committed to widening access, we've taken those students or those numbers on, and we continue to do so. All of us sitting here will have students who are fees only, the number will vary between institutions, and universities will choose to decide if that's something that they can sustain. We can try and get some more information on that. Actually, because your model is completely different from everyone else's, you're not a campus-based model, so how have you been breaking down these barriers for decades? We're 50 years old next year, so we've been reaching hard to reach students for five decades and have some experience in it. There's a multiplicity of approaches for traditional universities, starting young and making sure that we're dealing with young people in the early years. The scenario is very important. Probably one of the things that we'd all agree on is that we need to get better at learning from the evidence that we have on what works in this area and then universalising what works. On that point, a unique learner number would certainly help us all to track outcomes. In my institution, I'm keen to know young people who do the YAS programme in sixth year. Does it change their aspirations in terms of university, what university they want to go to, what course they want to go to? Critically, particularly those students who don't come from schools with the tradition of sending many people to university, does it help to improve first year retention? I'm pretty sure that it does, but getting the data from the universities that they go to is very difficult, because those YAS students don't come to OU. They tend to go to one of the 18 traditional universities in Scotland. I'd like to move on to talk about articulation. I have the recommendations from the commission for fair access. The ones that I'm particularly interested in and those who know me on the panel will know that I was a college lecturer for many years, so articulation is a subject very close to my heart. Many of the graduates from the course that I taught go on to university and do extremely well and then go on to have very fulfilling careers as a result. Some of the things that you're mentioning around drop-out of people coming from school to university, I suppose I have some questions around particularly the universities that have had an articulation programme, whether students who perhaps have come from school have never thought themselves as being university applicants, have come and done an HND, who have had that bridging experience of college, whether there's been any study done on whether they managed to come into a university setting and stay because they've had that bridging from college, first of all, but I'd also like to ask particularly the Professor Ian Diamond and Craig Mahoney, who I know have got substantial articulation programmes. What their response is to the recommendations 15 and 16 from the commission of fair access around taking on more HND students into second year, but I would also say that third year is not mentioned as well in, but third year is an option as well, and having stronger links with local colleges to facilitate that. A general observation for my colleagues who've got much more practitioner experience, say something. I think that this is an area that we've made a lot of progress on and it's referred to in our submission and that we're committed to making more progress on and we've got a joint project now with Colleges Scotland, our national recreation forum, involves multiple stakeholders, including NUS as well, to look at how we can drive articulation further. In particular, I think we're narrowing down now on a range of subjects where students aren't articulating with as much credit as you might expect. I think there's some subjects, business administration, mass communication, engineering etc, where actually students are generally articulating with credit from university. There's others in biological studies, social studies law for instance, where they're not typically articulating with full credit and we really want to do a drill down to find out what's the curricular reason, what's happening between the HN and the university curriculum that's making that more difficult and how do we fix that. So I think we're now, from a position of general commitment to articulation, we're now trying to get into nuts and bolts about how do you make some of the crunchy bits aren't quite working yet, work better than they might, but I'm sure practitioners will want to say something. Professor Mooney. Thank you for the question and very happy to give you the perspective from UWS. UWS articulates a number of students as you correctly identified. In fact, its data suggests it's 2,000 students in the current year that we're in. We work interactively with eight FE providers and of course you'll know our footprint Paisley, Hamilton, Eyre and Dumfries. So we work with local FE providers in those regions to allow students to articulate onto our programs. I think you raise a question which needs a much wider discussion and that is what is essentially a recognition of prior learning and there is a national framework for that here in Scotland. How is a recognition of a prior learning mapped against the curriculum the university is offering because that's the judgment made as to where somebody is allowed to enter. UWS I'm fairly proud to say in most cases would allow somebody with an HNC to enter level 8, second year and somebody with an HND to enter level 9, third year. So that's typically what we do. I know that not all other universities do that and again that's about the mapping. If the curriculum from the previous award shows a skill gap and a knowledge gap with what's expected for a student who would be progressing through the university into that level then clearly there's a deficit that needs to be made up and that can be done through summer programs or various other entry provisions. But essentially UWS is doing quite a lot of this. We're very proud of our relationships with the FE sector and we've been pretty successful at it. I think you asked another question as well within that which is what is the learner journey like when they come to university. Undoubtedly the intimacy of the contact at the FE college is much more intense than it will be in university and sometimes students can struggle when they join a higher education institution to complete that element of a degree program and we take a great deal of care. We have some permanent college liaison officers who work with the students articulating into the university to give them skills and knowledge and experience and exposure to the university before they come in hopefully enabling them to have greater success and I can't give you data here at the moment on the success rate but my understanding is students who articulate to us do very well. Professor Diamond. We have 111 pathways now with FE colleges. I should declare an interest I chair Edinburgh College of Further Education so you could invite me back to speak for FE a little later. I'd like to see how you do it today. But I have nothing really to add to what Professor Mahoney has said for the very simple reason that we do much of the same. Just as an example, students coming from Aberdeen North East Scotland College to us to do engineering and articulating into third year, we put a lot of effort to make sure that mathematics is at the right level because so there's a kind of intellectual level but there is also, as Craig has rightly said, a social level and we put a lot of effort into that. I'm also very impressed by the link between Forth Valley College and Stirling University where on many courses students at Forth Valley College in that first two years of the HN spend a day, a week studying in Stirling. That seems to me to be incredibly important because it means they get to know the campus, get to know their way around the types of studying from an early base and also they're expecting to go if they want. So it's part of a pathway. So I do think we've got a lot to do. I personally believe passionately in articulation and articulating with full credit. But as I say, at the University of Aberdeen, we are on an upward trend, very close links with a number of FE providers and intending to increase that. Just very briefly, we've got articulation agreements with all 15 colleges in Scotland outside of UHI. We've got an agreement way to leave that to them. So almost 20 per cent of our students are coming in with HN qualifications and they do much better than the general cohort. So if they've got an HN qualification they tend to graduate with a better class of degree. We're also interested in talking to colleges and other universities about three-way partnerships whereby they can start off HN qualification in college, then do a couple of modules with us and then take that credit perhaps to some of the universities that are more competitive in terms of entry requirements. So very much a model we're keen on expanding. It was one other aspect. I've had conversations with other university principles around maybe having a greater partnership approach between universities and colleges and actually sharing resources and that could be a way to bring college students and university students together in a way that actually, is that something that any of you have considered? It's a conversation that we have had and I think it's the future, frankly. When I look at the facilities at Edinburgh College of Further Education they're much better in some areas than the facilities at the University of Aberdeen and vice versa and therefore it seems to me that that kind of partnership has to be a good thing for the people we're most interested in, the learners. Support what Ian has just said but to give you some examples from our point of view, in Dumfries on the Crichton campus we share in partnership with the local FE provider there a number of things that the library for example which is hosted in their building is run by my staff and so we provide a library facility for all five providers, HE and FE who are located on that Crichton campus site, an example of good practice in my opinion and one which works very successfully allowing students to integrate between FE and HE on a regular basis. We're just about to open a partnership with West College Scotland around construction engineering which will have a facility located on their campus that is delivered and supported by our staff. Geography makes a challenge sometimes but wherever possible we are very keen to work in partnership with the FE providers sharing resources which can be staff or facilities wherever possible. We don't have a campus obviously but what we do have in five colleges are OU learning spaces and they were designed to offer a physical space for OU students to go in and study but I've also had the benefit of college students seeing their peers doing an OU degree and thinking well that's maybe perhaps something that I can think about after my HN qualification so there's been that benefit too. Can I ask Susan what percentage or around about of school leavers of young people? I think there's a perception sometimes about the open university being for adult learners or returner learners. I mean is it still... Our average age is 26 which is I think younger than people would expect and that is to some extent in Scotland skewed slightly by our YAS students but for the whole of the UK the average age is 27 so it's not skewed that much. I just have one final question convener and that's around recommendations 15 and 16 and I guess maybe the answer the question is directly for Alasdair Sim. Do you feel that you are on target for reaching and achieving the recommendations that have been asked of universities in terms of articulation as set out by the commissioner for fair access? Yes as long as they're understood intelligently I mean I think we are now at the nearest percentage point at 58% of people who are articulating within the same subject area and articulating with full credit and so you know I think we are very much on a growth path towards more and more people who do articulate within the same subject area reaching towards the the SFC target. I would also say though that we do need to maintain space for people to completely change subject between college and university and if you change subject if you're changing that pathway quite fundamentally then you're not going to to bring your full credit from college with you you're going you know it's simply not possible and we need to facilitate people's ability to have learned journeys that aren't as neatly linear as choosing a particular subject when you enter a college and pursuing that all the way through to a degree. I think we also need to just protect the ability of people to actually say I'm not really ready for the third year of honours degree I think my educational journey will be better supported if actually I step back and come into university at an area stage. That can and often is the personal choice of a learner to do what they think is right for achieving the best possible outcome for them. So I think we're on a path but I think we've got to recognise it learners themselves have got a variety of choices and needs that we need to respect. Can I just come back on that last bit then? You're saying that you're confident that you'll achieve the targets but you might not achieve the targets because of actions that students take. Well I think it depends how you understand target. I mean the target referred to here is of 75 per cent articulation with full credit. I think that makes sense if you're talking about articulation within the same subject area and I think and this is acknowledged in the Scottish Government's own learner journey review report from last week. I think you have to take the learners who are changing subject out of that target because it's simply not possible to take someone who's who's completely changing your subject area and say can you come into you know first year honours third year at university it's not doing them a favour to take them into something that they've not they've not prepared to succeed in. Yeah but I thought that would already have been taken in the account in terms of the targets anyway. Okay thank you. A tarrish and then was. Thank you convener. Can I move on to funded places? The cap on funded places means I suppose that some applicants are being squeezed out. Is there any evidence of that or do we understand what that yet means? To give a personal impression I would say it's probably an incipient rather than current major problem. I mean I think when you look at the data in our submission on increases in entrants to university and what you're broadly seeing at the moment is growth in people coming in from the most deprived quintile and relative stability in people coming in from other quintiles so that's not an unreasonable picture at the moment. I think as you look towards the future and towards achieving the the targets that we all aspire to for 2030 as you increase your recruitment from the most deprived parts of the community you also want to protect your ability to recruit from all the other parts of the community all the other quintiles you know many of whom are also disdain characters into disadvantage. Yeah so I think over the period to 2030 we we're certainly seeing look to achieve that. It's reasonable to look for growth in the number of funded places so that we can be fair to everybody that's that's what we want to be and I think we have the opportunity to do that. That means more money and that means well it means more funded places which as we have said you know we have the opportunity as we look beyond brexit that some of the money you know we will grow a different profile of EU students. If there's no more money there's no more funded places unless you find some other way to fund it then there will be a squeeze. Yes but I think while we wish to maintain you know our openness to EU students in the future and while while they're important to many of our subject areas and to our skills pipeline I think there will be a rebalancing between Scottish domiciled and and EU students and I think that does release an opportunity to to widen access while being fair to everybody else. Sure so let me just understand that a rebalancing means what who's who which group is less and which group is more. A rebalancing means I mean I would expect there to be fewer EU domiciled undergraduates in the system after brexit transition period while still maintaining our openness to at least some sustainable number of them. We're probably better not to beat brexit because we did that yesterday at some length. Lucy Blackburn Hunter sorry Lucy Hunter Blackburn's research for the period 10 to 16 for 18 year olds applications and accept suggests that the group that is most at risk of displacement are young people in the middle middle quantile. Do you accept that? Does that research suggest that? I think that the commissioner himself made similar remarks that as you look at which categories of the population are finding that their applications to university are more likely to be accepted you're finding that the most privileged quintile continues to do well. The least privileged are increasingly finding it possible against university and their application success is now right up there with the norm. There is some evidence of a little bit of a relative squeeze on the middle but I think as I said at the beginning of this. I have plenty of panic total evidence of it from mums and dads going through around supermarkets telling me it's happening and head teachers telling me it's happening as well. So I just just have thought the university sector given your dealing with the offering at the moment you must have you must have masses of data about how many young people are applying and therefore are getting in or not getting in you must have a pretty decent feel for what's now happening. Could I respond answer yes for our university we do and while I agree fully with Alasdair perhaps about the if you like overall within the University of Aberdeen there are many subjects that we would like to take more students onto where students are well qualified well qualified Scottish students who would be able to come but we do not have the space for them. What I cannot tell you is when we sadly and it is very difficult for us but when we sadly have to say we don't have the space for you I can't tell you where they go whether they go to other universities in Scotland to study the subject they really wish to whether they go to other universities in Scotland for a subject that is their second or third choice or whether they are pushed either into England or not to university. That's a pretty big gap in our understanding of what's happening. So how would you improve that understanding the point that Susan made about the learner journey the learner number giving everyone an ID number does that help? It's actually you know for every learner trace what's what happens to them through a system you know right from school through college or university or college and university through to employment so that one could actually do the sort of fairly sophisticated analysis about what are the patterns that tend to lead people to success right through the education system and into employment. Thank you for that. I mean but I say very quickly I am absolutely passionate Scotland is one of the very very best places in the world for research on linked administrative data the University of Edinburgh and colleagues are just brilliant it is absolutely it seems to me given that skill exists not impossible to use the kind of approach that Susan has suggested to link with other data to come back to where we started today around income properly to understand all the questions that you are absolutely rightly asking. Thank you so it would be fair to what to ask the commissioner to bring us some evidence once he's had that opportunity to discuss with your sector what is actually happening so we understand what are the what in effect are the unintended consequences of this policy. Pursue the theme that Tavish Scott has been on. Professor Diamond you were saying very publicly last year that one of the groups for whom you had frustration and not being able to accept more was for medical undergraduates particularly at a time with GP problems of recruitment and you would like in an ideal world to be able to take on more very well qualified domiciled Scots who had an interest in medical career could I ask you do you think that the government should pursue a policy as it has done in recent times of increasing the cap for the specific subject areas where there is a dearth of students sorry a dearth of the places that you would like to offer or do you think that we would require to have a fundamental review of the structure of the funding of higher education. Thank you very much for that very very interesting question let me respond I mean one of the most difficult things that I ever do is when MSPs and some of you may have written to me in the past with you know cases of your constituents who have unbelievably good highest qualifications really would like to be a doctor and they are one or two percentage points below a line even after for example the contextual admissions we give. University of Aberdeen has a fantastic record in training doctors and training doctors who subsequently work in Scotland and we would love to be able to increase our numbers medical students a particular case and we have also I think you will know but I'll tell you a really wonderful programme just starting which the Scottish Government have supported very well for widening access where the students come and do a year at North East Scotland College they are all disadvantaged from disadvantaged backgrounds they are all have to tell you doing very very well they've been supported fully and they will all I'm sure almost all of them probably not hopefully all of them will become doctors in a few years time and isn't that it's just a fantastic programme we'd love to expand it. So question you know do we need to expand the number of medical students my own view is that that would be a very good thing and we at the University of Aberdeen would be delighted to take some more students they then move that to a question do we need a fundamental review of higher education funding now look I've just done one for the Welsh Government and I think an enormous amount of really interesting information came out which has really impacted on policy in Wales that is exciting not only for full-time students but for part-time students as well. It is for you as elected representative in this committee to decide whether you feel such a review would be useful for Scotland were you so to do I would be delighted to help in any way I could. Thank you Professor Diamond can I just ask you very specifically on that very helpful answer would you get remove the cap would you remove the cap? I personally have said for many many years that I believe fundamentally in the Robins principle from the 1960s that everyone who has the ability to go to university and wishes so to do should be able to do so. Thank you. I'll just say that the corollary of removing the cap would be that you need to fund each place that for university expansion mean if you simply remove the cap you actually compound the problem that Craig has expressed of expecting more students to be taught for a same amount of money so I think you know being fully supportive of Robins principle if there were a political choice to remove the cap it would also be a political choice that the funding for each student in an expanding system should be sufficient to enable us not just to teach them but to support them with everything we need to to enable them to graduate successfully including the pastoral support. Can I also really make the clear point of the role of FE in teaching HE? I'm glad that you both, Professor Mahoney and yourself, have brought up the role of FE. Ruth Good morning panel. Before I move on to my main question I just wanted to say that we've obviously heard great evidence of good work that's going on this morning but there's clearly a real disparity between universities in Scotland and how successful they are being. Would you accept that it's time for some other institutions to do a little bit more to work a little bit harder in terms of widening access and if so what would you have them do and when would you have them do it by? Well I think others may wish to comment on what their institutions are doing but if I just give the general answer that I think genuinely every institution is working extremely hard at this. I mean the most selective institutions obviously are facing the biggest challenge in a sense that relatively few learners from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are actually presenting with a really strong set of hires and that is being recognised for instance through contextual admissions and through outreach programmes so actually getting right down there into schools say you know Edinburgh's educated past programme working with kids through football to actually say look there are real opportunities for you at university and there are real opportunities for you to aspire to a highly selective university so it's you know everyone has got examples of these programmes and every institution including the most selective are now also looking at what more they can do on articulation to make sure that people have got pathways from college to the most selective universities so there's no lack of commitment I think you know that there is an issue that if you are running a highly selective university or highly selective course your pool of qualified candidates even when you apply contextual admissions is smaller than it is if you're running a course that is able to be less selective. Okay just to come back you mentioned at the beginning that you were looking at the language of all that and I suppose when if I've been cynical if I hear that institutions are looking at something it doesn't it's a little bit woolly what are they doing and when are they doing it there's a lot of doing I mean there's a lot of doing of the actual programmes that are out there at the moment trying to promote aspiration and realistic achievement to make sure that people are able to get into the most selective universities. In terms of the practicalities on the language this is being done now with the target of getting new language into the prospectuses that are published in spring 2019 when you look at the language about admissions across universities it's all accurate but some of it isn't actually that learner friendly and so we've got a task group that is drawing on learner experience and also drawing on plain English campaign to see how can we actually just get on and simplify this so that what we communicate to learners and advisers is actually comprehensible so it's what's understood by them rather than what seems appropriate from our perspective to communicate so that's a project that is being done now. So that's about waiting for the print of a prospectus for the following year rather than is that my picking up wrong? The next prospectuses that will be published are the ones that will be published in early 2019 and that's what will inform the next round of applications and we want to make sure that those prospectuses have got much clearer language about admissions processes picking up on the point that we've heard multiply from this committee and in many other places that actually while what we expressed may be accurate it's not that easy to understand if you're a learner or an adviser. Ruth, I want to move on. Sorry, yes, okay. If I move on to the equally safe strategy, as a toolkit, as a parent and a corporate parent I was obviously delighted to see that launched and Professor Diamond mentioned about the importance of the first semester and obviously that's there to tackle the unacceptable levels of harassment and in some cases abuse that's been happening to young women. Part of that toolkit is support information for students and it mentions well-publicised support information for students so how will you publicise it and when will it be done? Will young women starting university this year receive that information? Answer yes and the big question is how and the sorts of things again there's no magic bullet here so the sorts of things we will be doing will be information in halls of residence rooms when you arrive the set of leaflets that are there support in halls of residence when people arrive because most of our first year students do stay in halls for those that don't or come in just a second but you know kind of the people there providing that early support through the whole of freshers week providing that support through tutors being advised to raise the issue and make sure people are aware through our online health and safety piece that students have to do in their first year and also through if you like outreach through the students association in in early times so would you know no one answer but a multiple level of roles and with a real aim to make sure that no one falls through a crack and is that mirrored across the institutions in scotland that approach thank you can ask you mr some isn't mirrored across the whole university sector i mean up we've got two principles here let's say it is but is it yeah i mean i think you know the the bar has been raised and quite rightly been raised in terms of expectation that we're all effectively addressing this and the stratified university gender-based violence tool kit is now part of the requirements through outcome agreements of what universities are expected to do to address gender-based violence so it is now being universalised across the sector i guess i've got a constituency interested in this as well that emily druett's parents are constituents of mine um can you assure me that at universities that every student will get a card or something that has got contact details to make sure that they know who they need to contact if anything happens like happened during that dreadful case with with young emily we are working on that at the moment um we're we're developing the text for that card is that a yes and oh yeah yeah we're getting on with it yes i mean it's quite a simple thing yes and so you're guaranteeing to me that every student will be given a card with contact details for the police or school whoever ate prices whoever it may need to be they will get a card with the necessary details on that could could i just check and write exactly when we we've made it you know very clear commitment prickly for staff that they're going to get a first responder card we're working with NUS scotland it actually liked to be able to to write to you with the exact commitment that we've made rather than give you something might mean accurate but we have worked very closely with emily druett's parents on this and we are committed to dressing but i just don't want to tell you something that isn't absolutely explicitly accurate but i think i do think it'd be a real hole in the system of what you're doing as you're given a staff member details to to know who to contact but not given the people who may well be first affected by it so i do appreciate it and i appreciate if you come back to as soon as you can with the detail jolly and you wanted to come in on us a follow-up question and i recognise this is a very sensitive area and we've all been affected by what happened to emily druett in the light of what happened there will universities be looking at how they respond and the mechanisms that may have in place when dealing with the perpetrators of gender based violence because you have got power at your disposal to make it clear to young men who perpetrate gender based violence or anyone who perpetrates gender based violence will not be tolerated by an institution and that they may be looking at being thrown out of university. I think all universities have very clear disciplinary processes in place and gender based violence violence of any sort is very clearly articulated in all universities i've ever worked in and i don't imagine any of my colleagues here or other institutions in scotland don't have similar processes in place rest assured the university sector is absolutely committed to ensure that people feel safe no matter what their background their gender their orientations their ethnicity when they come to study on universities however we are societies and in society sometimes things fall foul of what we would like however i can assure you that in my university and i'm absolutely certain it's the same here discipline reactions will be taken against staff and or students who do the wrong thing but will it be made clear from the get go that it will not be tolerated and there will be a clear message going to all new students that gender based violence will not be tolerated and the consequences will be obvious to them i don't know how to answer that question because there are a number of obligations that we have of students and staff when they come to a university and these are merely part of a package of expectations violence of any form is clearly one of those but so too are many other things misappropriation language and so on so i think i'm cautious about saying yes to you on that because you're picking a very specific point but all universities have a charter and a relationship with their student body which says these are the expectations we have of you these are the expectations you should have of us and i think within that and back to the question which the the chairman was asking is similarly a set of characteristics that we will make sure we do make sure that every year new students joining the university have access to whether they read them or not and whether a card is the right mechanisms to do it is a different matter and i'm not sure how we legislate for that can i just come back on us and i accept completely say what i'm saying is there has to be something that is for the student right and it becomes a responsibility not for a member of staff for the student but the other thing is that a if you're working closely on this has to be that at the end of it that the universities are saying that if there is some sort of evidence that there's been abuse and an abuser is known that even if it's not got to the stage of criminal proceedings for the safety of the student involved then there must be a mechanism that says if we can't see enough to kick you out we can still make sure that you are not taught within the university that you're taught from home or distant learning or whatever because there's no way that while something is going on that a victim should be having to face that her abuser and that has happened and it should never happen in universities and it certainly i hope will be something that comes out of of these discussions that you're having just now okay thank you Ruth are you finished right the very briefly i'm going to bring in and mary but just one point i think we've talked about contextualising missions we've talked about articulation and there does seem to be a disparity between the way that universities are dealing with this and it seems to be that disparity to a great extent is between the if you like the moderns and the ancients what are the ancients doing to to make sure that they do i mean it's all right saying that you know more people want to go into a university but surely they still get the same responsibility to society as the other universities do like the west of scotland i'm sorry i have to disagree with you there chair if i know in which part that they don't have a responsibility no no no no no no no not at all we are doing everything we can we do contextual admissions and we have done for a long time we take that very very seriously the point that i've already made is that only 4.7% of the post codes in our catchment are from disadvantaged areas and the fact that last year over 5% of our entrance even on those criteria came from those areas i think one statement i would also say that we have enormous numbers of other students from areas which who are from disadvantaged backgrounds from areas who do not come from those areas and we have given them contextual admissions and all the support i have talked about and when i talk look at other ancient university i think one of the big statements is that the principle of st andrews absolutely rose to the challenge of leading one of our widening access and is doing everything she can to to push st andrews in that direction so i think it's unfair with respect to say that the ancients are not taking this seriously i didn't say about the technique seriously what i says is the statistic show that they haven't got to where the the other universities have and therefore there's still as much more to be done to level that plane for us i think we don't to me it suggests that we get plenty students who want to come to our universities so therefore it's easier for us not to no it's not the case at all i would submit i do think there are some real aspiration issues and i think you know that there is i mean let me give you an example i was in a school in tori in abedin which is one of the poorer areas of abedin recently and i gave a speech and we were having a really nice conversation with s5s6 pupils afterwards and one young woman came up to me and said you know she really really wanted to study law but people from her school didn't go to the university of abedin i said that's you know and i said that's absolute rubbish and i'm more or less took her to you know the university we have to get within the schools as well as the work that we do so that in our target schools everybody thinks they can come to university of abedin we need to make that normal don't take this personally it was about the ancients as as a whole and i accept that there may well be special circumstances around with you we've still got to make a journey but at the same time it is not just these universities it's about the schools as well yeah except everybody has to go along i mean just just speaking on behalf of the sector as a whole including the ancients i mean i genuinely um there's a very very strong commitment from the ancients now i mean i think um it may be helpful if i mean it's worked out as being done now picking up on what rift mcguire said um there are a wide range of programmes for instance st andrews have got have got a specially tailored program for people coming in from widening access backgrounds um to physics and astronomy um so that you know you're not expected to to to come with a level of attainment that very highly coached students may come with from from schools in very privileged areas i mean there's a lot of work being done um and i think it'd be helpful if i wrote to the committee and just actually set out some of that work that that is being done um and equally um there is work in hand now um reviewing what all universities including the ancients are doing to promote articulation but um but uh you know coming back to to a point i i made in response the rift mcguire's question earlier um when you're dealing with the most selective courses um there is an additional level of challenge um in widening access because because of the typically um lower average attainment levels um of people coming from most disadvantaged backgrounds so you know it's serious work is needed to help people to realise the full potential and to recognise that full potential when it's not fully um evident from from exam results um and i do think that that poses an extra degree of challenge for for the most selective courses well it would be helpful to get that information but also sort of timetable and where you see you're achieving what you're home to set out to achieve not just that you know the universities are looking to at some stage in the future Professor Mahoney i just wanted to pick up on the same point that you've just been discussing and highlight the fact that it's unfair to to distinguish in the way you did i think all universities and we work together very closely are doing the best they can to widen access um and i think we also should be careful about trying to homogenise the system the university system in scotland is in very is a very successful system of higher education recognised throughout the world and is very very capable and and you can look at my university and say well okay how come you're not doing very much research uh because we're not a research ed university we're teaching that university with research which is world class but it's small and i think homogenising a system and i'm know you're not saying that i'm not saying homogenising system hang on can i just finish though but i know you weren't saying homogenisation but that's the risk that we present by having this global argument saying you must all be at 20 minimum of md 20s if you want to look at that then i'm failing seriously widening access because i've got no md 80 students that's an interesting take on that but nobody's saying that that's what you're looking for what we're saying is every university should be within the grasp of every child that that can follow the qualifications that all of us are committed to the fact that if a student wants to access higher education we want to get them in well let's hope that if we have a discussion here in a year or two years time that we find that the statistics are much more equal than they are just now mary thank you convener i have two brief questions and i've had a specific question for susan stewart my questions are around retention and a lot of the issues that i wanted to raise have been covered but i just wonder from the panel what analysis and follow-up you do when a young person particularly from si md 20 leaves university is there an opportunity for them to drop out and come back in is there an opportunity for them to change the way they'll learn for a period of time if they need to to drop out to to do something either with family or they have a particular issue and you don't need to give me a huge amount of detail but i would appreciate it if you have examples if you could perhaps let the committee know but maybe a yes or no or a very brief answer on that one would suffice i think this is one that the practitioners can give the most insight on but maybe we could just give a bit of statistical background when when we look at statistics for people who discontinue courses we do find that at least some of them are coming back and we got about 15 percent come back into the same institution and do they come back in at the point on the left or do they come back in at the start i think typically the point you left about 11 well but just just under 12 percent are coming into different institutions you know obviously um as as press mone he said some people who are leaving university are leaving because actually they got a good job that they want to go and do and that's that's their choice but i think we do need to take seriously making sure if someone is stopping their studies for reasons that aren't really you know good reasons it's because things just aren't working out for them we need to to engage with them find out why and find out whether continuing in higher education is going to be the you know how we can best support them but um my my colleagues who are practitioners will have more insight okay can i come in on can i come in on that scottish funding council funded o you to lead a project called back on course which worked with all universities in scotland who participated when people had left a course early the report will be out in the summer but three fund findings initially that collectively we need to do much more and invites and guidance when someone is starting university secondly the early exit is not just a first year issue and happens subsequently too and thirdly and this is really important i think that the majority of students who leave early would like to return to study in the future not necessarily in the same course it's often subject course has been the mistake and not necessarily at the same institution so we will make sure that the committee get a copy of that report when it's out in the summer but at all you of course you know learn which are reason i'm not linear you know people do i think step out is a better phrase than stop out i'm not sure commissioner never beat glass go will you talk to me stop now we we do have people return we have bespoke learner agreements we're lucky we're a small school with a lot of individual inputs a major teacher a centre for voice instruction that someone that's teaching you dance they can keep an eye on the students so our retention rate is very good across across the whole sector but we we will allow someone to return in that yeah no that would be helpful has there been any impact on the move from bursary to loans on students particularly from simd 20 i'm not aware of evidence that has that has particularly linked that to drop out but um i was on the um the panel that um developed the the proposals for foreign group student support regime and we realize that you know financial stress is you whether you link it to specific policy changes or financial stress is one of the the key drivers of people um discontinuing their studies um and so we made a recommendation for a minimum quantified amount of money per year um for students i think we're waiting for the Scottish government to to to respond and full to that because i think raises some interesting issues about the junction with the the benefit system and need teased out but yes i think at least making sure that students have got access to an adequate package um of support um even if it is based on a balance between bursary and loan um is important okay and finally my question for um susan stewart um the open university um as she said a moment ago because of the way people learn they can drop in and drop out they can do a degree course over a much longer period of time and there have been concerns raised um in the last few months about financial constraints on open university across the UK um is that something that's reflected in scotland as well or is there a different position in scotland i mean obviously uniquely the the open university has a footprint in all four nations of the UK which gives economies of scale etc in terms of curriculum choice the the pattern north and south of the border is very very different um in scotland our student numbers have grown year on year since 2014 so much so in fact that we are now recruiting 27 percent more than our funded places which is interesting in england of course there was a change in 2012 to the model of higher education funding and student support and what happened was a disproportionate fall-off in part time numbers in fact david willis who was the minister who was the architect of that policy has gone on the record saying that he regrets that policy and that those circumstances were were unforeseen and that he regarded that as a mistake that older students have more commitments they have mortgages they have work etc and tend to be more debt averse and so student numbers have have dropped south of the border in the o u we are we are addressing that you may have seen media reports on that i am very confident that curriculum choice for students in scotland will be in no way restricted and that we will continue to provide first class experience for students in scotland we are in fact i think the only university in scotland that in every year the national student survey has had over 90 percent student satisfaction and i intend to keep it excellent thank you very much thank you Mary got over lastly thank you convener i wanted to ask about student support and finance firstly do you think that the current levels of student support are insufficient i i guess the answer is probably yes we know that students do experience challenges in their in their learning journey as experience not just in scotland but across the uk and in fact in most modern higher education environments so i'm sure anything that we can do to improve that would be welcome i think simply i actually doesn't know that we should come in in part time but i think at least in terms of what we were able to do within limited time on the panel on student support for full time students we'd recommended that there should be an entitlement to 8100 a year based on a combination of bursary and loan which we thought would be a reasonable level of support and also should there be special measures for instance for students who are estranged from their parents so that you recognise the circumstances of disadvantage that aren't tackled by just the normal entitlement can i can i just say obviously we want parity of part time and i think that's especially important when looking at widening participation and widening access because we know that a far higher proportion of disadvantaged students whether it be students with disabilities students s i m d 20 etc for a variety of reasons choose to study part time so we very firmly believe that part time should have parity with full time in whatever maintenance loan bursary system we come up with no i asked the question because obviously you've talked at various points about support that's on offer once students get to university but what worries me from conversations with young people in schools in my constituency is that they are making a decision on whether even to apply to university on the first place based on whether or not they believe it's financially sustainable for them and that obviously for those from more deprived backgrounds puts them off applying all together so the group of qualified people who made the decision not to go do you think that that's a fair assessment you know i'd certainly recognise that the reality of that that the people are concerned about the debt they may accumulate for their maintenance while while they're at university mean that that's a reality but i think there's they simply don't think that they can afford to live off the money that's available well i think i'd say two things one is as a panel we did recommend an amount of money that related to the national living wage that we thought was a fair amount of money for a student to to live on and secondly i think there needs to be much better explanation of this as an income contingent repayment we recommend that there should be a reasonable threshold i think we said 25 000 but it's it's since gone up to 25 000 in england of income per year before you start repaying your student debt and i think there needs to be much better explanation possibly from from sasin the student loans company that that the the loan element of what you take out for your maintenance is something that will be repayable at a reasonable rate over a long period and only on on on your income above a certain threshold i wish that we're better understood because i don't think you know the maintenance support regime need be an obstacle to people from challenged backgrounds going to university okay all of what you wanted to come back up yeah no i'm first of all want to say about huge support of the work the university of west scotland do in Dumfries and think that it works really well but i just wondered first my honey from your experience do you think there's an element of people actively choosing to study at your institution in Dumfries and other campuses because it allows them to to stay at home and in some cases they may if there was a different finance available either study at different university of west of scotland campuses or other institutions i think that's a very good question and i i would probably say the answers yes broadly we know that students at uws who are scottish domiciled travel on average no more than 10 miles to come to any one of our canvases yes we're recruiting therefore a large number of locally domiciled students if they could afford to have the access to a different university they may choose that and it relates perhaps to my earlier point that that we have a diversity of he is in scotland 19 of them who are all doing very in my opinion very good jobs in what they do and and certainly working in a university and leading university that i'm very proud of working in and very proud of what we achieve however as a university that by newspaper ranking tables in the uk will be found toward the bottom rather than the top there are perceptions which people have some of which i'm sure in this room about what that means by comparison with a different university so if i take the campus that you're referring to the Crichton campus the university of west of scotland is the largest provider of he in Dumfries however most people know that the university of Glasgow has a footprint there it's nowhere near the size of work that we do and i think that just demonstrates what i'm trying to say here and that is that uws has a great job it transforms people's lives it gets people into employment that they wouldn't have gotten into otherwise and when we look at our alumni which we're now exploring with some some depth and integrity and it dates back quite a number of years now we've got over 70 000 graduates many of whom are high net worth individuals who have gone on to fantastic things it doesn't matter which university you go to you've got to make the difference with that qualification yourself in your own life and i'd like us to promote every institution in scotland in the same way okay thank you very much is that you all over thank well thank you then can i thank the panel very much for the evidence this morning it has been a very good session and we will close the public session thank you very much for your attendance