Chamber and committees

Thank you very much indeed. As you said, it is a briefing and not a full report that makes recommendations but, nonetheless, it contains some very stark warnings. You have already used the word “risks”. One of the warnings is the view that the risks to the college sector’s financial sustainability have increased since 2022. Will you give us an overview of what those risks are, in your view?

That is very helpful. Just for confirmation, do we expect that report to be produced by the Scottish Funding Council before the end of November?

In paragraph 14 of the briefing, you describe a 70 per cent cut in staffing over a five-year period at Ayrshire College as

“a scenario in which it could no longer function.”

Is it a scenario in which it could no longer function in its present form or is the full stop after “function”?

Thank you. I will ask Mr Sweeney the same question. Does COSLA accept the findings and recommendations in the report?

I go back to the question that we put to Audit Scotland in the previous session. I realise that there is an aggregation of factors, but, broadly speaking, can you say what the biggest driver is for the level of inflation in the construction section? Does it relate to labour, for example, or to the supply chain?

On a related point, the Auditor General recently published a briefing on infrastructure and the challenges in delivering projected budgets. To what extent might those pressures have an impact on the delivery of infrastructure in the early learning and childcare sector?

There is a striking implementation gap here, isn’t there? I am thinking in particular about provision for eligible two-year-olds. That is targeted according to people’s benefit receipts and the care experience of either parent or child. They are an extremely important group that is very much a priority for the Scottish Government through the Promise and other work that has been carried out, but these two-year-olds are only two once, aren’t they? If this programme has been in place since August 2021 and we are now at October 2023 and you did not know who these children were, that means that an awful lot of children have missed out on an opportunity for early learning that was stated as a matter of public priority and imperative public policy. How do you answer that?

Exhibit 4 in the Audit Scotland report gives examples of data gaps—we will say a little bit more about those again, I am sure. One of the data gaps listed is the extent to which children with additional support needs are not accessing funded early learning and childcare and the extent of any unmet needs. Here is another targeted group—and an especially important group—where there is a significant gap in the data available.

Again, Mr Rennick, I think that our view is that this ought to be a priority group. If anybody is to miss out on the childcare and early learning offer, it should not be this group.

You have talked quite a lot about the surveys. We get the importance of surveys in helping inform policy, but what really ought to lead policy is the raw data, is it not? It is all about the evidence of where the demand is, whether it is being met, where the target groups are and whether they are accessing the promise that has been given to them and which they should be accessing. The committee’s view is likely to be that customer surveys and those kinds of sampling exercises are useful, but it is the hard data that we are interested in. Why are you not capturing that?

But it was a stated Scottish Government policy, wasn’t it? I do not know whether that is the point that Mr Simpson is going to make. I understand what you are saying about the availability of data sharing and so on, but if the Scottish Government announces a policy and Parliament legislates for it but we are unable to deliver, it becomes a rather hollow promise, doesn’t it? You do not need to answer that question. I will bring in Graham Simpson.