Colleges get extra £17m but unions warn of more cuts

Education Correspondent

Friday 21 September 2012

SCOTTISH colleges are to be given an extra £17 million to spend on students, but will still face cuts.

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Andrew Denholm Education Correspondent

The Scottish Government said an additional £11m would be spent on bursaries with an increase of £6m to protect student numbers. However, colleges and teaching unions warned funding for teaching budgets would still fall by £6m.

Last week, The Herald revealed colleges across Scotland had tens of thousands of people on their waiting lists. The Government said the issue could be explained by prospective students applying to multiple colleges to try to secure a place.Ministers also said reorganisation of further education, with some college mergers, would save money. However, the Government was accused of ignoring the significant cuts to the amount of money provided for teaching.John Henderson, chief executive of Scotland's Colleges, said next year would still be a difficult one for the sector despite the increase, announced as part of the Scottish draft Budget."The additional £17m is welcome to maintain student support, but the college teaching grant will fall by over £6m," he said."This will be challenging for colleges, in terms of maintaining both student places and quality of provision at a time of high demand."We will seek to work with the Government - to find solutions that provide places for young people in colleges and enable Scotland to develop the skilled workforce it needs to grow our economy."Robin Parker, president of NUS Scotland, which represents students, said the proposals were "not good enough" and urged more to be done for colleges. He added: "It is welcome news the Scottish Government has managed to find £17m for colleges above initial plans and we understand this will protect student support and protect college places."However, despite these increases, this budget would still see cuts to colleges worth millions of pounds. At a time of incredibly high youth unemployment, and in a Budget that was billed as focusing on growth, that's simply unjustifiable."Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland union, which represents college lecturers, said it valued the additional investment, but described it as "limited"."Whilst the additional money is welcome, much more needs to be done to provide support for Scottish education," he said. "In further education, funding cuts of around 10% in each of the past two years have cost thousands of lecturing jobs and reduced the range of options available to students and prospective students."Opposition politicians also went on the attack.Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Gavin Brown said: "Over two years, the college budget has been badly slashed, no matter what the SNP pretended was the case. With such high levels of young people out of work, how can Finance Secretary John Swinney say this Budget was about the economy?"However, Education Secretary Michael Russell defended the choices made in the draft Budget. He said: "Our post-16 reforms are highly ambitious and regionalisation is helping colleges to better focus on the student and on local labour market needs. We continue to support these changes through an extra £17m which will maintain both student numbers and financial support to students."Mr Russell highlighted the record levels of funding to universities to keep education free and protect places.

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Colleges get extra £17m but unions warn of more cuts

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