Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2024
Just yesterday, we had the opportunity to debate colleges in Scotland, and I am pleased that we have the same chance to do so again today. In my role I have had the privilege of meeting college staff and principals who are going above and beyond for their college. I have heard lecturers and support staff up and down the country share with passion stories about the subjects they teach and the students they empower. I have heard about the ways in which colleges serve their communities and build our workforce of the future.
Incredible college staff and talented students work day in, day out, to do all that, but they are doing so in the face of a Government that has, for 17 years and several education secretaries—including John Swinney—let them down.
Members will have read the recent articles in The Herald that show just how bad it is, and I would like to take a moment to put on the record my thanks to The Herald and James McEnaney and his team for shining a light on it. The reports highlight what trade unions, staff, colleges and students have been warning for years: Scotland’s colleges face an eye-watering funding shortfall and the funding gap has real-life consequences, not least of which is the drop of more than 125,000 students attending college since 2008-09.
Let us remind ourselves who those students are. More than 40 per cent are over 25, a third come from the most deprived areas, 15 per cent are disabled, 17,000 are black and minority ethnic and 3,000 are care experienced. Colleges lift the glass, class and step ceilings that are in the way of opportunity, and we should support them, but they can do that only with the support of their Government.
Colleges cannot afford another day of inaction from the Government or lack of leadership from the minister. The situation has been called a burning platform. Audit Scotland has warned that colleges cannot deliver the same for less and Colleges Scotland has said that colleges have impossible choices ahead.
Here is what some of those impossible choices look like in reality. Staff in one college are saying that books are being taken out of the library and that student support, careers advisers and personal academic tutors are being cut. Courses are being cut in another college where senior-phase pupils go to study advanced highers in areas that we need people to be skilled in. There are campuses that are facing closure and students with fewer options.
Across Scotland, jobs are under threat. College Employers Scotland is saying that its members do not have the resource to negotiate the existing pay offer and industrial relations are hanging by a thread. Most worrying of all, the Public Audit Committee was told that four Scottish colleges might not survive the year.