Scotland does not value the college sector, and that needs to change. That is the conclusion of a new paper from the Jimmy Reid Foundation on Further Education in Scotland, by John Kelly and Dave Watson
Colleges matter in Scotland’s economy because they generate a significant proportion of the nation’s wealth and are crucial to the Just Transition to meet our climate change targets. Industries must upskill their existing workers and need a new generation of workers with the necessary skills. Without adequately funded colleges, there is no viable pathway to net zero. However, colleges are often treated as a poor relation of the education system, largely ignored by policymakers. This paper aims to put colleges back into the public policy debate.
The core problem is funding. The Scottish Government’s funding for the sector has reduced by 8.5 per cent in real terms between 2021/22 and 2023/24. This year, the revenue budget for colleges was cut by £32.7m (–4.8%). However, inflation since 2021 means the sector needs more than £834m. College funding per student is £5,054, compared to £7,558 for a university student and £7,657 in schools. College funding cuts also deny some students the ‘springboard’ they need to get to university. This funding disparity ignores the substantial contribution colleges make to the Scottish economy. On average every college graduate creates an additional £72,000 boost to productivity for the Scottish economy due to going to college. These graduates also help to support the equivalent of a further 203,000 full-time jobs in the Scottish economy over their 40-year working lives.
The second biggest problem is industrial relations. Workers in the sector have had to resort to industrial action repeatedly – over pay, in defence of terms and conditions, seeking to protect jobs and courses, and significantly, to ensure the implementation of agreements. EIS/FELA, for example, has had only one year in the past nine years in which they have not had to take national action; this is even though there had been no national action in the sector over the previous 20 years. This decade of disputes highlights the lack of trust within the sector to this day between those who seek to manage it and those who work in it.
Following regionalisation, successive ministers responsible for Further Education have taken a hands-off approach to the sector. The paper highlights, with case studies, reduced provision for students with Additional Support Needs, the loss of local provision,
and the impact on students from disadvantaged communities. Several reviews of the college sector have received a mixed reception, but even the positive proposals have simply gathered dust on the shelf.
Why? We argue that schools and universities are the focus of education policy because the policymakers went to universities, and their children go straight from schools to universities. Colleges have a high proportion of young and not-so-young adults from working-class backgrounds and communities left behind in other policy areas.
The report makes eleven recommendations for change.
They start with structural change, returning colleges to a public service focus with collaboration, not competition, at the heart of their mission. Ministers must engage directly with the college sector, ending the current arm’s length relationship. Government, colleges, students, businesses and trade unions must work together to rebuild the sector. The regionalisation of colleges has failed, with fewer courses and the loss of local provision. We need a new structure that puts the local back into college provision. College governance also needs a complete overhaul with a public service ethos, strict control of management salaries, expense rules, and a new code of practice for college boards.
Industrial relations need a fresh start. An independent and funded review of salaries should create a new baseline, followed by joint training and a culture shift to joint working in the sector’s collective bargaining machinery. Fair Work principles must move beyond the mission statement and be delivered in practice. Fair Work failures are linked to the lack of proper funding, which is at the core of all that has gone wrong with college provision. There has to be a sustained above-inflation increase in revenue funding to set a new baseline and a capital budget that at least starts to rebuild the estate. The aim should be equity of funding with other education tiers.
This will be challenging. It requires increased funding and a significant change in culture and behaviours. Our economy, students, and the workers who support them all deserve better.