Seòmar agus comataidhean

You and I had an exchange in the chamber a few weeks ago, did we not, when you reminded me about the commitment that had been made to look at the issue of disabled students?

We are open minded about the range of the consultation and I am happy to engage with you on that. The topic has been raised with regard to both the part-time element, which is a long-standing issue, and disabled students. The other week, I looked at the numbers for disabled students and there is a great variation among certain disabilities: for some, access to university is improving but one or two others are going back the way. I would like to understand why.

There are particular issues. Some long-serving members of the committee will remember its work on Ms Duncan-Glancy’s Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill, which we did when I was on the committee. A memorable piece of information was given to us by, I think, the University of St Andrews. The information was that, if a student does not have an unconditional offer from a university, it can be August before the student knows that they are going to that university and can engage with it. When a university has resources in place for disabled students, those are focused on the students that it already knows about, who are in years 2, 3 and 4. When new students present in August, their needs are often a surprise to the university. It scrambles to provide support and does not always achieve that. That stuck with me as we worked on the bill.

More and more disabled students are going to university, which is a positive, but are we doing enough to properly capture and provide the support that those students require? That is not just about student funding. I want to understand whether we are doing that. If we are not, what more do we need to do?

I think that I am right in saying that you have been looking to make amendments to the Housing (Scotland) Bill. That is a conversation for you to have with the minister who is overseeing that bill.

As I said a moment ago, we think that such a scheme would be prohibitively expensive in the current financial situation, but one of the problems is that it is difficult to quantify what uptake would be. That makes it all the harder to analyse. To be absolutely open, I note that it is unlikely that we are in a position to implement that scheme in the short term, although I recognise the ask.

I did not say that they were not an issue—

Some of the issues are similar to those that we have encountered with some of the other measures that we have looked at. It is about data sharing—that is the fundamental challenge that is effectively holding back some of the progress that we would like to make. It is because of the data-sharing platform that exists in Scotland—although “platform” is perhaps the wrong word. That is the impediment, but we are approaching all of this from the standpoint of how we can find a way to make it happen.

Do you mean for students in general or for widening-access students?

With respect, it is way above my pay grade to comment on the Government’s view of GDPR. To correct one thing, the issue is not the gathering of data. The data is gathered and held: it is sharing of data that is problematic.

I will give an example. If you share a certain data set, the attached risk is that you can share information about the individual, which is, by default, beyond what it is intended that the data be used for. I will not give specific examples. If a data set has been gathered using multiple sets of information and you are sharing that data for a particular purpose, are you, essentially, giving away more detail about an individual than they might want to be shared, or more than it is appropriate to share? That is one of the challenges in the issue.

We can do only what we are able to do. My enthusiasm for the measure is the same as that of other people’s, and that is the case for some of the other measures. I am frustrated at some of the barriers that we encounter, and we are actively looking at how we overcome them, because all the measures that are being talked about would be of huge benefit to us as we look to hit the target—and, more than that, just do the right thing. If we can implement it, we will do so. That is basically what I am saying to you.

In my near two years as a minister, I can think of only one occasion when someone told me that they had enough money and they walked that back a few weeks later. It is a fact of life that both Opposition politicians and stakeholders will constantly tell ministers that more money is required. I am sympathetic in the space of student support, notwithstanding the financial and budgetary restrictions that we are working with. What is expected and asked of our universities is increasing and is more wide-ranging than before, and not just in the context of widening-access students. I am sympathetic to that. I have a budget in this portfolio that we must work to, but this is an area in which, if there were something on which we could do a bit more, I would like us to do it, because it is, at times, challenging for the universities.

That said, the approach that the University of the West of Scotland has taken is showing real promise; we are waiting to see the first round of statistics on that. Its approach is that it does not wait until a student comes forward and says, “I have issues.” In universities, the challenges that students face often do not manifest themselves until just before exam time when, for example, they will say, “I’ve got a problem here; I have dyslexia,” or whatever. However, UWS has a proactive approach, whereby it issues a survey before a student joins the university. You might be aware of that. Up to 67 per cent of the students are filling that in, which allows UWS to identify challenges that those students might face, whether that is caring responsibilities, needing a job, the hours of their job or whatever. UWS has been trying to tailor its offering without disrupting the university’s approach to supporting those students. I am told that the first tranche of data is encouraging, and I have been encouraging other universities to look at it. The commissioner for fair access visited UWS to have a look at it for himself.

There are things that you can do, but I accept that there are financial challenges. It is an area that I would like to be able to do more on.

Targeted or increased? There is a difference.

We have the best student support package that we have ever offered in Scotland—indeed, the support that is available has increased markedly over the past few years in recognition of the challenges. However, we all know that there is a limit to what we can provide. If you are suggesting that we could better target that support, I am certainly open to considering what that might look like.

It is, of course, challenging for students. I have met students who have moved from other parts of Scotland to study in Edinburgh, for example, and the cost of accommodation in Edinburgh is extremely prohibitive. I absolutely understand all that. However, sitting here today, we have to be realistic and recognise that there is a limit to what we can provide.

At the outset, the parameters were set that measurement is done by using recruitment numbers. I will come back to recruitment in a moment, because an issue is emerging around that.

On retention, I agree that there is an argument for moving to use that as a measurement, because I think that it is more accurate. You are right to point out that there has been a retention issue, but that applies to students in general, and we can trace that back to factors such as the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

At the most recent widening access forum meeting, the topic of retention and whether we should look at retention numbers rather than recruitment numbers came up. To be fair, a number of universities could articulate the scale of the issue that they are facing.

The other point that we have heard about—anecdotally, perhaps like your conversations on Monday night—is that some of the universities are now finding that they are identifying students who would qualify under widening access but who, due to the cost of living crisis, are declining offers because their family or financial circumstances mean that they must find a job. We want to bottom that out to see the scale of the issue. The information is anecdotal, but an issue is emerging that is related to external factors.

We are very much alive to all that, and it is forming part of the discussion. I do not disagree with your point about whether there should be a formal measurement process.