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Can we get hold of that review paper? That would be really interesting.

I realise that we have not yet heard from Craig Naylor, but John Ireland and Julie Paterson have spoken about the importance of independence, which is something that all the SPCB-supported bodies have emphasised to us. However, to flip that on its head, one of the frustrations that the committee is hearing from SPCB-supported bodies involves a perceived inability to effect change. They produce brilliant papers, research and investigations, but that work does not go anywhere. Although they are accountable to the Parliament, committees or members are not picking up that work and feeding it into the Government. I wonder whether being sponsored by the Government and having direct access to a minister means that the work that you do is taken up and fed into the system more effectively than it would be if you were that further step removed from the Parliament.

That is helpful.

I will return to the point around funding. John Ireland spoke a little about that at the start of the meeting, but I want to dig into it a bit more.

We are interested in how funding arrangements are different for SPCB-supported bodies versus Scottish Government bodies. Will you give us a bit more detail about how your budgets are set? Do you set your budget and then it gets signed off by someone? What is the process?

I will dig in for further details. Do you come under pressure to make efficiency savings, or do you have support to find them and to optimise your budget? Is there a push to do those things? If additional work comes up or an urgent crisis happens, is there a process for applying for more money?

Do you get pushback on your budget or is the process of approving the budget largely technical?

Is there pushback on the budgets that you set, or is the process generally a technical one?

Does anyone else want to come in on that?

I am interested in the theme of workplace learning. I am continually surprised and slightly horrified by how far the UK is behind North America on things such co-oping in engineering programmes. I do not know how familiar you are with such things. When I studied engineering at my university—and this was common in universities all over North America—my degree took five years, but it took me seven years to graduate because, for two and half of those years, I worked in industry, paid by industry, and not at the minimum wage but at junior engineering rates. When I graduated, not only had that had some impact on my student loans, but I had two and half years of experience, and I was offered two jobs in my first week in the UK.

The model in North America is that universities partner with industry, which knows that the model exists and gets engineering students for a chunk of time—four months, eight months or a year—so that those students are able to complete an entire project. It is quite common for engineering companies to say, “Brilliant. We need a new thing, so we’ll get some co-op students in the summer to deliver that project for us.” It is a long-term partnership, and it means that we do not have the juggling act of graduate apprentices being here for three days a week and there for three days a week, which makes it difficult to fund lectures and difficult for students to plan their lives and their transport to work—all those ordinary logistics.

In terms of flexibility for institutions, is the North American model being looked at? Should it be, or is it not right for the UK? How do we make the workplace learning better here?

I will not ask everyone to come in on every question if they do not have anything to add.

I will ask a few different questions, if the convener will indulge me. I will start on the point about careers advice, which we have just been covering, and move on to the flexibility of the system. I will then close on apprenticeships, because I know that some of my colleagues have questions about those.

We have touched on some of the solutions to the joining-up problem that Sandy Begbie highlighted, whereby we have this enormous potential and need for skills opportunities in Scotland but both young people and mid-career transitioners are not finding them or are not aware of them. In my younger days, when I was a young STEM ambassador—I am an electrical and mechanical engineer—I went into schools to talk to kids about engineering. I would show them pictures of the work that we were doing, and it was very far removed from their experience, especially in more deprived areas. The kids had aspirations to be dog walkers; they could not imagine themselves operating machinery, let alone designing it. There is a gap midway between jobs requiring a master’s degree in engineering and being a dog walker, which we do not seem to be filling.

I have frequently heard criticism about careers advice. Sandy Begbie said that it is patchy, and Paul Campbell said that the DYW co-ordinators are not there. Is that the missing piece of the puzzle? How important is that work?