REVIEW OF SCOTLAND 'S COLLEGES STEERING GROUP: COLLEGES' STRATEGIC FUTURE Minutes of Meeting on Thursday 29 June 2006 at Scottish Executive, Europa Building ,Glasgow |
(You can download a PDF version of this document by clicking here)
PRESENT
Laurence Howells Scottish Funding Council, (Chair)
Raaj Bhatti Further & Adult Education Division, (Secretariat)
Col Baird Review of Scotland's Colleges Team
Claire Woodward-Nutt Higher Education Futures and Research Team
Stuart King Futureskills Scotland
Gail Edwards National Union of Students Scotland
Bill Wardle James Watt College
APOLOGIES
Iain MacRobert Her Majesty's Inspectors of Education
Grahame Smith Scottish Trades Union Congress
David Caldwell Universities Scotland
1) Welcome and Introductions
1.1 The Chair welcomed members to the meeting.
1.2 Apologies were noted as above.
2) Minutes of last meetings and action points
2.1 The minutes of the meeting on 31 January 2005 were approved.
2.2 Progress and comments against action points from that meeting was noted as follows:
Description of Action | Update and comment |
1 | Steering Group to consider whether they wish to commission any other 'think' pieces to feed into the process. | Agreed that these should be short, punchy background notes. Demography was a clear issue and should be commissioned now. ACTION - Col Further background notes would be commissioned following clarification of drivers. |
Description of Action | Update and comment |
2 | Executive to speak to STUC about how best to engage employers and trade unions. | Employees and trades unions discussed these issues at the recent Open Space events. Separate discussion with Trades Unions planned for 8th August. |
3 | Executive to draw up a list of all the stakeholders to be included and circulate it to the Steering Group for comment. | This has been superseded. Conversations with stakeholders largely complete, (see item 4 below) |
4 | Steering Group to consider whether we would want to commission some external expertise to facilitate the workshops | See item 5 below |
5 | Check if any other work like this has been done internationally. | Unable to find any similar examples |
6 | Information from the Employers Survey carried out by Futureskills Scotland to feed into the process. | Stuart King e-mailed this to members shortly after the meeting. But that was some time ago, so he will circulate again. |
7 | Consider how best to feedback the Steering Group's recommendations to the Working Group | Working group has been informed electronically of the outcomes of the Steering group's meetings |
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3) Update on Wider Review
3.1 Col provided an update on how other workstreams of the review were progressing.
3.2 The intention is to launch the "Unlocking Opportunity" report at a ministerial event in September or October, depending on Deputy First Minister's availability.
4) Update on Futures Work
4.1 Claire outlined some of the futures activity that has been going on elsewhere including:
- the work of the Executive's Strategy Unit which culminated in the First Minister's lecture last month and the simultaneous publication of the "Strategic Audit" and "Trends Analysis" papers
- the 2 open space events in May
- conversations with FE Principals and other relevant parties including Futureskills Scotland, SUFI, SCDI, CBI, STUC, NUS, SFC and SQA.
The intention is to have the bulk of these meetings concluded by end July.
4.2 Feedback from the conversations to date has been fairly diverse. Although a useful summary had been provided, it was agreed that it would be useful to try and tease out what the key issues are.
ACTION - Col to consider how key themes and issues emerging from the programme of Futures conversations could feed into the forthcoming workshops.
5) Planning for "Drivers" Workshop
5.1 Claire spoke to paper CSFSG-P05 circulated in advance, outlining possible approaches to the forthcoming workshops to identify drivers and develop scenarios.
5.2 She said that colleagues in the Executive's Strategy Unit had suggested that having a one-day workshop to develop scenarios is very ambitious and fairly high risk.
5.3 A short note clarifying the purpose and outputs from the futures work was tabled. This was agreed subject to minor amendments and is appended to this minute, on page 5.
5.4 The group agreed there was a need to establish and understand how the scenario modelling process would work. We need to give workshop participants a better steer if we want to generate useful outcomes. There were a number of suggestions as to how to take this forward.
5.5 There was an opportunity to ensure that this work builds on the First Minister's futures work. We could even consider some of the drivers they have already identified as the basis for scenarios. It might also be helpful to investigate whether there were any resources available in the strategy unit to facilitate our workshops and to ensure consistency with the First Minster's futures work. If we could not tie in to this work, we might need to rethink our approach.
ACTION - Claire to arrange for her, Col and Laurence to meet colleagues in the Executive's Strategy Unit.
5.6 It was also acknowledged that there was a significant amount of background material for workshop participants to assimilate and that it would be important for the messages to be summarised.
ACTION - Col to consider the kind of background notes for workshop participants which would be most helpful.
6) Forward planning - further Futures-related work required
6.1 Claire had produced a chart outlining the timetable for the remaining work plan. Members were in agreement with the proposals but also acknowledged that this was dependant on the outcome of discussions with the Executive's Strategy unit, as noted under item 5 above.
6.2 There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was brought to a close.
SUMMARY OF ACTION POINTS:
1) Col to commission background note on Demography 2) Stuart King to circulate again, information from Future Skills Scotland's employer survey 3) Claire to arrange for her and Lawrence to meet colleagues in the Executive's Strategy Unit 4) Col to consider how key themes and issues emerging from the programme of Futures conversations could feed into the forthcoming workshops 5) Col to consider the kind of background notes for workshop participants which would be most helpful |
Reviews Team
July 2006
Annex 1
Review of Scotland's Colleges
Colleges' Strategic Future
Purpose of Future's work
The purpose is to describe possible scenarios for the economy and society in Scotland, and what it would be like to be a college in each of these scenarios.
This will help Government, policymakers, the Funding Council and colleges to:
think about how they would respond to future possibilities;
be better prepared to adapt to what actually happens;
prepare for the trends (demographics etc) we know will start to affect us soon;
identify the scale of changes and adaptation colleges would have to make in different futures;
identify things that should be done in the immediate future to prepare for a reasonable range of long term possibilities.
The scenarios will start with some assumptions about key trends we can see already working through - demographics, environmental issues, global competition etc. They will also consider a range of political, economic, social and technological dimensions, and thereby generate a small number of scenarios for exploration. In order to stimulate thinking the scenarios will explore relatively extreme possibilities, some desirable and some undesirable.
The process will not produce a single "right answer" or a simple recipe for a successful future for colleges.