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My constituency also has pockets of deprivation: you make a fair point. I cannot stress enough the amount of energy that is being spent and the effort that is being made across the piece to complete the journey in the way that you have articulated.

Let us deal with Corseford first. It was a pilot. When I came into post, we extended the pilot for a period. Unfortunately, up to that point, no formal review of its outcomes had been conducted.

My understanding is that Corseford was designed to provide an educational offering for young disabled people, then a transition to additional educational opportunities further down the line. The analysis of that has not been done; it is currently being done. In the budget, through the conversations with the Liberal Democrats, a sum of money has been identified that, subject to the outcome of the review, will be available for such provision. We need to understand what works at Corseford and what does not. That will help to inform our thinking. You are right that it will feed into the wider piece of work that you mentioned.

Collectively, we need to do better in supporting disabled students. In some instances, it is resource intensive for individual institutions. I am open minded on that, but you will appreciate that we must take the issue forward based on evidence. The review that is being conducted externally will help us to identify what has worked effectively and what might not have worked. That will inform our thinking.

There were two contributory factors to the delay in responding to him last year: the first was the purdah period created by the UK general election, and the second was the parliamentary recess periods. This year, we do not have a UK general election coming up. We anticipate the commissioner’s report in the spring—you say that it will be in March.

None of the measures alone gives us enough refinement or gets us to the target. We are going to have to be very smart about developing a full range of measures to enable, if we can, our reaching the target.

We are not resetting the target—it is in place—but to answer your question I note that we are making sure that, underneath the target, we can look at the country and satisfy ourselves that we are doing a far better job of reaching all the young people who would qualify for admission, rather than, as was alluded to earlier, GCU and UWS admissions making up such a large proportion of the target. They would still make up a large proportion in the target’s delivery, but we need to satisfy ourselves that we are delivering an agenda by which we reach far more young people, particularly in the rural and island areas that we are missing at the moment.

Given the impetus behind this activity—I should add that the commissioner sits on our forum with the universities, and that he advises us—I would look to respond more quickly than we did last year. However, I should also point out that I do not, of course, know what is in his report. I have given you the reasons why last year was different.

I did not.

There is a UK-wide issue with funding of universities. I think that a report on English universities came out this morning from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and it talks about underfunding—I think that that is the term that is used. A number is being quoted at the moment—I cannot guarantee its veracity—of 70 UK universities having to make staff cuts of between 10 and 15 per cent.

Do I think that all Governments would accept that the cost of delivering university education is higher than the funding that we are providing? I will sit here today and say yes—I do believe that. As I said earlier, we are having on-going discussions with the universities about what we will do about that, and those discussions will ramp up.

However, Willie Rennie will also recognise that neither the cabinet secretary nor I is sitting here with a magic wand. We cannot resolve the issue overnight. We are engaging and will continue to engage with him to see what we can do, but I hope that Mr Rennie, along with many in this Parliament, recognises that free tuition is a central tenet of the offering in Scotland.

Addressing skill shortages is central to all the work that we are doing in the reform space. We are trying to ensure that the offering from colleges is much better aligned with the needs of the economy than it is currently. There are many examples of colleges working closely with local employers and meeting those needs, but there are instances in which that is not happening.

We are trying to bring about reform in that space and to ensure—this relates to your point about low-paid, low-skilled jobs—that the offering to our young people through college courses and apprenticeships is improved so that they have a better chance of obtaining long-term, well-paid, sustainable employment. That is part of our overall work.

With regard to colleges, as I said earlier in response to the convener, we must look at the budget in the context of all the other work that is being done with the college sector, particularly through the tripartite group. A number of assertions have been made. One figure that has been bandied about is that the college sector will have an operating deficit of about £70 million for the current year, but, as I understand it, that does not take account of some of the measures that we have implemented.

I will give an example of what is being done, not only by the Government but by the SFC, to assist the college sector, much of which goes unseen. The colleges were facing a potential pensions deficit, which we have addressed by providing an additional £6 million. The issue of maintenance was touched on earlier. We have put in an extra £13.5 million to assist colleges to address that problem. I know of a college that, without that extra support, was facing a budget deficit of £1.25 million. It will now break even for the current financial year.

The other issue that is often not touched on—I understand why that is the case—is the recovery piece, which is commonly referred to as clawback. That is where colleges are underperforming in the context of credits allocated set against the number of students they attract. Historically, that money was recovered and brought back into the system. Over a period, not just on the cabinet secretary’s and my watch, the SFC has increasingly given flexibilities to the colleges to retain that money, to the point where, in the current financial year, only two colleges are facing clawback. That often goes unmentioned in the context of what we are doing with the colleges.

I understand that this is a challenging time for the colleges, particularly as they are trying to move into a different space that is better aligned to the needs of the economy. However, we are providing a lot of support, both directly and to the SFC, to assist them.

We have been very clear that compulsory redundancies should be a last resort and that everything else should be exhausted first. The agreement between the lecturers’ union and the employers is predicated on that position, which I have articulated many times to the colleges. Although they are not covered by a no compulsory redundancy policy, we encourage colleges to avoid them at all costs.

It is part of how we arrive at 3.5 per cent. I should point out that the sector requested that we do that.