Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you.

You made an interesting point earlier when you said that, in the context of the programme for government, the Government and the First Minister want a

“national approach to skills planning”.

I think that you will need to take that up with the Minister for Higher and Further Education, Graham.

I thank our witnesses very much indeed for the evidence that they have given us. It is much appreciated. I thank Richard Maconachie, Lynne Raeside and Martin Boyle from the Scottish Funding Council for their contributions. I also thank Neil Rennick and Shirley Laing from the Scottish Government for their input. There were one or two items to follow up, such as the split between non-teaching staff and teaching staff redundancies, but we will do that.

I now move the committee into private.

Thank you very much. I can safely say on behalf of the Public Audit Committee that we all want the further education and college sector to succeed. Any criticisms that are contained in the Auditor General’s report or any probing that we embark on this morning is not intended to do down the college sector but to see what can be done to make sure that it is performing to the best of its potential.

We will go straight to questions, and I invite Graham Simpson to put some to you.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 30th meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee. We have received apologies from the deputy convener, Jamie Greene. James Dornan is attending the meeting remotely via videolink.

The first agenda item is a decision on whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Item 2 on our agenda—our principal item this morning—is further consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s report “Scotland’s colleges 2024”. I am pleased to welcome our witnesses from the Scottish Government: Neil Rennick, director general for education and justice; and Shirley Laing, director for lifelong learning and skills. I am also pleased to welcome our witnesses from the Scottish Funding Council: Martin Boyle, interim chief executive; Richard Maconachie, director of finance; and Lynne Raeside, deputy director of policy and external affairs.

As usual, the committee has several questions to put to the witnesses this morning, but, before we get to those, I invite Neil Rennick and Martin Boyle to make some opening remarks.

Mr Boyle, does the Scottish Funding Council have a perspective on that?

You may have to intervene in that space if there is a net increase in the budget for staffing that results from the job evaluation process.

I have a couple of final questions, one of which arises from the reviews that took place and reported around the institutional landscape and the future of organisations such as Skills Development Scotland, including who has oversight of apprenticeship funding. My reading is that the oversight and budgetary responsibility for apprenticeship funding is likely to shift from Skills Development Scotland to the Scottish Funding Council. If that happens, what guarantee is there that the money will continue to be applied to the provision of apprenticeship training, rather than to plugging the financial deficit that we spent the early part of the meeting talking about?

Forgive me, Mr Rennick—you have given me two contradictory answers. Either the Government is going to honour the financial implications of an objective job evaluation exercise conducted by the employers and the trade unions and overseen by independent expertise or it is not.

Thank you very much. I will turn to a fairly routine but fundamental question that we ask witnesses: do you accept the findings and recommendations in the Audit Scotland briefing? I ask Neil Rennick to answer first.