Meeting of the Parliament 14 June 2016
Political discourse around education too often relies on numbers, but the success of people can never simply be measured in figures. I am very aware of a tendency to judge the success of young people and the Government purely in terms of how many young people go to university.
I want to talk about colleges and partnerships. Colleges provide higher national qualifications, which fall into the category of higher education, as the minister mentioned. We should always be mindful that higher education is not reserved to universities, especially when we talk about figures. Colleges provide a pathway to university degree courses, and that pathway can often allow a person to get a better idea of what degree courses are and are not most suitable for them, which means that they will not drop out of university so easily. Leaving college with a higher national qualification and going straight into employment is also a measure of success.
When it comes to education, one size most definitely does not fit all. In the past 10 years, I have seen FE change to reflect that. In particular, there is the new focus on courses that lead to recognised qualifications and employment, and there has been the success of the two plus two programmes between colleges and universities. The relationship between my former employer, North East Scotland College—which I will call NESCOL from now on, because saying that is quicker—and the Robert Gordon University, or RGU, is a terrific exemplar of that. Working together, they have created a north-east articulation hub that is a model for the rest of Scotland. Not only does the programme facilitate progression, it ensures that the college and the university make a major contribution to widening access. The partnership also works with schools in areas that have been traditionally less likely to access education beyond school. Funded by the Scottish funding council, RGU has developed a suite of programmes designed to support secondary 5 and S6 pupils who are considering studying at degree level, either via the college route or by direct entry to the university. Those “access to” programmes offer the pupils an opportunity to get first-hand experience of undergraduate degree study courses and student life on campus via twilight sessions that are held after school.
I also want to tackle the rhetoric that I have been subjected to by my political opponents over part-time courses and cuts to college places—which Liz Smith alluded to, as did Iain Gray. As someone who has taught across both the Labour-Lib Dem Administration and the SNP Administration, I was something of a Banquo’s ghost when Lib Dem and Labour opponents thought that they could trot out the “college places cut” line at debates, because I have lectured during both political administrations.
There are two myths around the subject. The first is that full-time college places actually mean full-time hours. No—they comprise 16 hours per week class-contact time, and those hours are usually timetabled over two to three days to allow students to hold down additional employment or to manage family responsibilities. That was certainly the experience in the college that I taught in.
Myth number 2 is that people are disadvantaged because they now do not have opportunities because of the lack of part-time courses. Returning and mature students can still access courses that can fit their circumstances and full-time courses. However, part-time courses are still available in colleges—it is just that their number does not equate to the sheer number of such courses under the agenda that was promoted by the previous Administration. That agenda was well-meaning, but had some unfortunate manifestations.
Leisure courses accounted for a great deal of the stats that have been quoted in political rhetoric about part-time courses. As enjoyable as teaching to people of retirement age a one-off afternoon course on using your camera is, such part-time courses rarely encouraged anyone to come back to access courses that have recognised qualifications attached, they tended not to lead to employment, and they competed with other institutions that were offering leisure courses, including community centres, libraries and third sector organisations.