���˿���

The door is not closed. This committee might decide to include the issue in its report, and we will respond to it.

It is important to understand the context in which all this has been taken forward, which involves genuine collaborative work between the Government, universities and colleges. We have approached the issue from the point of view of accepting that the blunt measure that we currently have represents a barrier, and that there might be something else that we could do. Including free school meals as a measure was suggested as an option by the university sector, particularly by the universities in Aberdeen, where a unique data-sharing arrangement is already in place between the local councils and the two universities, so it made sense to pilot the idea there.

There are difficulties with scaling that up, which the universities have identified. The pilot has, self-evidently, given us a bit of a test bed to look at how it might work in practice. We ought to use free school meals as a measure if we can, notwithstanding the data-sharing issues. We have also looked at the school clothing grant, which was another possibility but, again, we run into data-sharing issues.

As I said, we have come at this from the point of view of asking what the art of the possible is here. There is a strong argument that, although SIMD20 is the driver, universities would benefit from having a basket of measures that they could dip in and out of. We are keen to put as many measures—or tools, if you like—at their disposal in order to achieve what we all want to achieve.

My understanding is that the pilot in the north-east is quite far progressed with regard to moving into the delivery phase. There was a slight delay on the part of one of the councils, but the expectation is that the pilot will be up and running fairly quickly, and that we will probably be in a position to assess its success or otherwise by late autumn, which would give us a sense of how it has worked.

We must first determine that that is the only route that we could take. None of the bills—given their parameters, taken at face value—would capture that. You will understand the risks of broadening out a bill at the last minute—it is not something that we think is viable.

I will bring in Clara Pirie on that.

You said a moment ago that, according to the individual who gave evidence, a lot of that work is now out of date. We would need to take account of that. I was reading a briefing on the findings the other day, and we could certainly base some of the consultation on that. I will take it away and think about reconvening the group. That might feed into the consultation. I am happy to engage further on that.

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?