Meeting of the Parliament 08 May 2024
If only Ross Greer and his party had been in government for the past two and a half years, we might have seen a bit of a difference.
The Government’s policy on colleges has lacked coherence for some time. Let me provide a few examples. It created national pay bargaining and raised expectations of pay rises but failed to provide the funds for colleges to deliver that. In adopting a policy of no compulsory redundancies, it hinted that that policy applied to colleges, before excluding them from it. It proclaimed that colleges were a characteristically Scottish route to a degree, but it has cut their funds over the past 17 years. It has talked about skilling and reskilling, but it has cut student places. When Government funds were in short supply, it merged colleges and brought them closer to Government, while limiting their freedom to raise funds themselves.
The minister is trying his best to change that through his work on skills and apprenticeships, but he must recognise the weaknesses of the legacy that he has been handed. Colleges can be responsible for greater social mobility, for improving life chances, for economic growth and for meeting the skills needs of our transformed economy, but for that to be a success, there needs to be a change of Government priorities.
For the record, my party has repeatedly included colleges in our costed budget proposals, but those proposals have been rejected by successive finance secretaries. In that context, it would have been helpful if Ross Greer had used his previous influence in the Government to halt the £26 million cut to colleges instead of pretending today that the college cut had nothing to do with him and the Greens.
Although, technically, ministers have no direct role in pay negotiations, the intervention of the education secretary in the teachers’ pay dispute, which resulted in a cut to the colleges budget to pay for a pay rise for teachers, rubbed salt in the wound for college staff. The minister therefore has a duty to seek a resolution to the industrial disputes that have bedevilled the sector for a decade.
It is not all about money and industrial relations, however. I want to see the college school partnership grow to spread the use of qualifications such as foundation apprenticeships. I want to see greater skills and education intelligence so that we can meet the needs of employers today and future skills needs, and flexibility to meet that intelligence with support from qualification bodies, with co-ordination between colleges to ensure that specialist provision is maintained.
In my last minute, I want to raise concerns about changes at Scotland’s Rural College’s Elmwood campus in Cupar, in my constituency. Although most animal care courses have been saved from closure and the SRUC leadership tell me that they are committed to a future for Elmwood, I am concerned about the slow progress towards the new facilities that are planned to accommodate the provision. I have relayed my concerns to the principal, but it would be helpful if the minister could intervene too. I hope that he will be willing to do so and to perhaps comment on that point in his summing up. I want a thriving Elmwood campus as do staff, students and the wider community, and we have a lot of work to do to ensure that that happens.