AT last the Education Secretary has stopped dithering and now taken some action to end six months of misery at Glasgow Clyde College (“Legal threat over college sacking”, The Herald, October 9). However, let us not forget the context of this decision or lose sight of where the responsibility for the sorry situation which prevails in Scotland's further education sector actually rests.
It is the Scottish Government which decided to “reform” the sector and to promote essentially illogical mergers of community colleges in Scotland's central urban belt (many of which made no geographical sense and which sought to merge colleges with essentially completely different cultures). It is also ministers who have inflicted the savage cuts in college funding which have been substantially greater than any other cuts made elsewhere in public services. It is ministers who have, despite this, demanded that colleges then seek to meet almost impossible performance targets. On top of this ministers promised that national collective bargaining would be re-established as part of these changes when only later did it become clear that this was to be achieved by even further savings to be made by colleges themselves.
Despite all of this agony it is now evident that the governance structures which ministers have created are unfit for purpose (let's remember that ministers have already “removed” Henry McLeish as the chairman of Glasgow's Regional College Board). Similarly Audit Scotland has yet to be able to identify any real improvements (or real savings) in the sector's financial situation this despite the wild, unsubstantiated claims made by both the Scottish Government and its civil servants.
Whilst all this self-inflicted turmoil has preoccupied colleges, the provision made for students has been allowed to whither and provision made for many students who require a second chance to learn (either as a consequence of being failed by schools or who require to retrained as a result of structural unemployment) has been significantly degraded.
All of this when the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has recently alleged that provision made in undergraduate higher education (which has largely been insulated from the cuts that have ravaged colleges) is hugely in excess of what the economy can actually absorb and that many graduates (maybe as many as 50 per cent) are underemployed in the jobs they subsequently get. Nevertheless, there are massive skill shortages in the real world. Despite this the Scottish Government continues to inflict what might still be mortal wounds on colleges (the very sector which could address this sorry situation).
Angela Constance has at last taken some decisive action in this particular case but surely ministers might wish to consider their own positions given the broader shambles they themselves have created. But in a Scotland, where there still is no effective opposition, this will, of course, not happen.
Finally, it is interesting that the Chair of Clyde College's Board does not seem to have much of a track record in Glasgow itself. It is very probable that Alex Linkston is a very able individual who has extensive and distinguished experience in public service management in the Lothians but he does seem to be a very strange appointment for an important role in what the SNP has recently called an Independence City. But evidently it seems that ministers believe that none of that city's citizens are up to it.
Ian Graham,
6 Lachlan Crescent, Erskine.
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