How SNP's hypocritical betrayal of Scotland's colleges is damaging the economy
As Audit Scotland has pointed out, without more funding, Scotland’s colleges will have to make even more cuts ‘at a time when demands from students and employers are not being met’
If the Scottish Government should be judged on one issue alone, then further education would be a strong candidate with the report published by Audit Scotland this week as a central piece of evidence for the prosecution.
Scotland’s FE colleges are deep in the financial mire, their budget cut by 20 per cent over five years, providing less teaching to fewer students. The biggest hit has been on part-time students, down by 11.9 per cent in a year.
Unravel these numbers and you confirm an indictment of irresponsible neglect and political hypocrisy. Neglect because Scotland’s need for a skills-based workforce has never been more urgent. Hypocrisy because the treatment of further education negates every piece of lip service paid to helping people out of disadvantage.
Academic snobbery
For generations, FE was the attainable option for so many who missed out first time round and now wanted to improve their life prospects. Often, the only practical way was through part-courses to fit with earning a living and family responsibilities. Eroding that option because there is no money to pay for courses is indefensible – and exactly what has happened.
Academic snobbery, which you do not find in more enlightened societies which value vocational education, has long worked against FE. I would date it to the early 1990s when responsibility for FE colleges was removed from local authorities by the Tories and put under the control of a Scottish Office quango, subsequently merged with its university counterpart. Guess which sector lost out?
Communities and councils were proud of their FE colleges on which local businesses relied. Once that link was broken, competition for funding was always going to work against them. The further decision-making moved away from people who appreciated FE for its social, as well as educational, importance, the poorer its prospects.
Giving colleges what they needed
I am conscious that “when I was minister” stories do not age well. However, when I read this week’s Audit Scotland report, my mind went to back to my stint as education minister during the interregnum between the 1997 election and the advent of Holyrood. There were a few things on which I thought I could make a difference in a hurry.
One was the treatment of FE. At that time, Scotland’s colleges were looking collectively for an extra £41 million. The number has stuck in my memory. I decided that, much to their own surprise, they would get every penny of it. At that time, we were committed to spending within limits we had inherited, so this money was at the expense of universities – a fleabite in their finances.
They grumbled a bit but the ivory towers didn’t fall in. It was a political choice and I wonder how many political choices have been made in favour of FE since then, rather than allowing it to revert to always being the poor relation, living from hand-to-mouth and struggling to survive never mind flourish.
A Scottish Government with any capacity for vision beyond the next day’s headlines would have been prioritising FE for the past decade, since it became apparent that a huge opportunity lay in the energy revolution alone. To benefit from it, we would need armies of welders, electricians and all the other tradespeople who could be equipped with lifelong skills.
Fixation on universities and ‘no tuition fees’
Instead, the fixation continued to be about university places, no matter the cost relative to other priorities. This obsession, allied to the “no tuition fees” mantra, has never added up and we now have a university sector which is dangerously dependent on the goodwill of foreign governments while the impact on educational attainment gaps has been minimal.
When Dundee University dug itself into this pit, with the Funding Council asleep at the wheel, £40 million was found to bail it out. Others will follow. At exactly the same time, the FE sector was being cut by 20 per cent. A single political choice cannot fix this mess but an overall review through a very different lens is essential.
“Across the sector,” reported Audit Scotland, “colleges have introduced a range of curriculum changes to reduce their costs”, cutting courses and teaching time. One example was particularly striking: “Some colleges have reduced their English for Speakers of Other Languages provision to make savings. This is despite high demand for these courses across the country. The principal of Glasgow Kelvin College [said] that the college had received 700 applications within 24 hours for a 24-person ESOL class.”
So on the one hand, the Scottish Government advertises us as the most welcoming, migrant-friendly society in the universe. At the same time, it is depriving colleges of the ability to provide an essential asset for anyone arriving in a new country – access to learning the language. Edinburgh is not a place which values joined-up thinking.
Fine words, no action
In June 2023, the Scottish Government published a document with the high-minded title: “Purpose and Principles of Post-School Education” which noted that “independent reviews of our lifelong education and skills system made a compelling case for change and point to the need to reflect on lessons learned as we rebuild and reshape the ways in which this system works”.
Fine words indeed with action still awaited. At exactly the same time they were inflicting further cuts on FE which have led to the point where Audit Scotland warns: “Without changes to baseline funding, colleges will have to deliver even less to remain sustainable at a time when demands from students and employers are not being met.”
It is time not just for political choices in favour of further education but a whole new mentality about educational priorities and what they should be expected to deliver for society and all its members.
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