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What is the expected timescale for publication of the review and the Government’s response?

Yes.

I recognise that and appreciate the discussions that we have had in the past. Would the Government be able to put some of the costings and estimates that it has made in the public domain? I am conscious that we have had that conversation, but I was not entirely convinced by the information that was provided, and I do not want to breach confidentiality. It is the Government’s information to put in the public domain, but it would be helpful for us.

I appreciate that. Given that, what is the Scottish Government’s offer and intention for estranged students? We talked with the SFC in the witness session earlier today and it collects data on this. One of the commitments that it made to collect the data was in response to the only organisation for estranged young people in Scotland having closed last year or the year before, so no one is advocating on behalf of that group. What is the Scottish Government’s intention in supporting them into further and higher education?

I will follow up on the point about care-experienced young people. Do you collect equivalent data for estranged students?

I have a specific follow-up question about Corseford College, which I have just contacted the SFC about—that email may or may not have made it to any of you, as I sent it only about 48 hours ago.

Corseford College is a unique institution. At the moment, it is funded not by the SFC but through an arrangement involving a variety of Scottish Government funding pots that have been cobbled together over the years. For that reason, there has been a lack of certainty around the college’s funding.

Corseford provides a unique offering for students who have very complex additional needs, for whom the regular college experience will not be possible. Have you had any discussions, either with the college or with any of the existing institutions that you fund, about how we can increase access for students who have very particular and complex needs?

I will follow up on Pam Duncan-Glancy’s line of questioning about support for disabled students and disabled people who aspire to be students.

Corseford College provides a unique offering for students who have complex needs and would find it challenging, if not impossible, to attend other colleges. I am aware that there are people who live far outwith reasonable commuting distance of Corseford who regularly get in touch with the college to ask whether it is aware of such an offering being available elsewhere in Scotland. The answer is that there is none: Corseford is unique.

I know that the Scottish Government supports the college and that you have had discussions with it. What wider conversations are you having about an equivalent offering to Corseford’s being available to everyone, regardless of where they live in Scotland? Perhaps that will be wrapped up in the review that you discussed with Pam Duncan-Glancy.

We do not have the time this morning to fully unpack how we got to where we are with Dundee university, and I appreciate that that is not why you were invited here this morning, but one of the suggestions that I have heard with regard to how things have reached this point relates to the SFC’s powers of intervention and involvement when individual institutions spiral towards the situation that Dundee is now in. I recognise that processes are under way to fully understand how things got to this point, but is it fair comment that the SFC’s current statutory powers are restrictive or inadequate? Perhaps you wanted to go further and intervene earlier, but, as currently set up in statute, your organisation did not have the necessary power to do so.

That is ideal. Thank you.

On a different matter, when our parties were in Government together through the Bute house agreement, one of our policy commitments was to establish a guarantor scheme for estranged young people. Will you confirm what the Scottish Government’s current position is on whether that will proceed, and say what support is being provided for estranged students in particular, who have unique challenges in accessing housing?

Sticking with the same theme, I am interested in how the data intersects. As things stand, students from an SIMD20 background who are disabled are doubly marginalised in the system. How do you handle that data without duplicating it in separate silos, whereby we have one report on the access rate of disabled students and another on the access rate of students from an SIMD20 background? How do you make sure that an intersectional approach is taken, such that a broader overview can be taken of how the various marginalisation factors overlap with one another and what the impact is?