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Meeting of the Parliament 14 November 2012

14 Nov 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Further Education

Malik, Hanzala Lab Glasgow Watch on SPTV

I am delighted to speak in the debate, because I have always been involved in higher education.

I wish Stow College well. I hope that it overcomes the issues that it currently faces, and I hope that the situation does not affect staff morale and students’ academic futures.

I have always been keen to promote the value of Scottish colleges, in Glasgow, in Scotland and internationally. Scotland’s Rural University College works in Lahore and other cities in Pakistan, and the City of Glasgow College works in Karachi and Lahore. We have a proud history of engaging with cities and countries overseas, and I thank our colleges for the wonderful job that they do and for facing up to the current challenges.

There can be no doubt that colleges provide access to education to a diverse range of people, through flexible learning models and a broad subject choice. That flexibility has an effect on social mobility. People from minority communities and people with disabilities benefit from college education, and students from diverse areas attend colleges and universities.

Several college mergers have taken place, and there will be more. In previous mergers, there has been support for our colleges to enable them to transfer to the new model, but that will not happen on this occasion. We are saying to our colleges that they will have to deal with those issues with current resources, and that is a huge challenge for colleges in a time of cuts. We are going through such a harsh economic situation just now, and saying to colleges that they must deal with the matter themselves places a huge burden on them.

As young people have to compete in an increasingly harsh labour market, there is a rising demand for college places. We have heard that there is a waiting list of people who want to go to colleges to retrain. I have heard various comments today about “hobby courses”, but I do not know what those are. To me, any learning is learning, and when people learn, they can apply themselves.

We give a lot of credit and credence to industry and businesses, but we do not seem to understand that we are a country of entrepreneurs. There are people who are self-employed, who earn a great deal of respect and money for this country. They also need education, and such education does not need to be focused, as we need people to be able to choose subjects. Flexibility and choice of subjects are important, as the fewer subjects we have, the less we have to offer and the more we deny our young the opportunities that they need.

I do not really care what happens down south, or in Ireland, Iceland or the Netherlands. I care what happens in Scotland, and in Glasgow. I know that our young need jobs, and that they need to be professional. If we want to attract industry from overseas, we need a professional workforce, and for that we need colleges and courses. To pretend anything different is useless, and we should not go there.

It is very important for us to ensure that we represent the needs of our communities. The idea of pulling parties down and trawling through people’s figures is not what this is about. We need to do a job, in the sense that we want to provide for our young and for our future, and we can do that only if we provide a service.

There are challenges with regard to how we deal with those issues. One or two members in the chamber have asked Opposition members, “What would you do to fund colleges?” The Government should not bring forward a policy, go through this charade of a debate, and then just pass it on. It should speak to people and share ideas, and come up with conclusions and solutions that are fit for purpose.

We all say that we have free education in our universities, but what about our colleges? If people cannot get into a college, they will have to pay to go somewhere else, so it is not free. Free is only free if someone can get access and can have the opportunity to study, and they will not get that if we go down the road that we are going down just now.

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Meeting of the Parliament 14 November 2012

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