How do Scotland's colleges really work?

Scotland’s colleges are vital, and remarkable – but they also in crisis. Falling funding levels and rising inflation have created a huge budget gap, and statistics from the past ten to fifteen years show student numbers and course availability sharply declining.

One of the great underlying challenges facing colleges is ignorance – too many people just don’t know enough about what they do, who they serve, and why they matter.

Even fewer people understand how the further education system as a whole really functions.

There are a total of 24 different colleges spread across the country, but the majority of them also operate within a regionalised structure.

Scotland has 13 college regions: ten of these contain a single further education institution, while the other three include multiple colleges. The regions, and their colleges, are:

• Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire (North East Scotland College)

• Ayrshire (Ayrshire College)

• Borders (Borders College)

• Dumfries and Galloway (Dumfries and Galloway College)

• Edinburgh and Lothians (Edinburgh College)

• Fife (Fife College)

• Central (Forth Valley College)

• Glasgow (City of Glasgow College, Glasgow Clyde College, Glasgow Kelvin College)

• Highlands and Islands (UHI Argyll, UHI Moray, UHI Orkney, UHI Perth, UHI Shetland, UHI North, West and Hebrides)

• Lanarkshire (New College Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire College)

• Tayside (Dundee and Angus College)

• West (West College Scotland)

• West Lothian (West Lothian College)

In addition to these arrangements, three institutions are not part of regionalisation agreements. They are Newbattle Abbey College in Edinburgh, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye, and Scotland’s Rural College (which has campuses across the country). Each of these is considered a specialist institution.

Read more:

Colleges facing budget gap of nearly half a billion pounds

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The vast majority of funding for colleges comes from the Scottish Government. According to Audit Scotland’s most recent briefing on the college sector, only one institution – Sabhal Mòr Ostaig – receives less than half its total income from central government, and seven rely on government for more than three-quarters of funds. However, this money it is not handed directly to the colleges themselves; instead, it is distributed by the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, commonly referred to as the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).

The SFC is accountable to the Scottish Government and to the Scottish Parliament, and also operates as the official statistical authority for colleges across Scotland.

As part of the arrangements for receiving funding, colleges are required to develop an ‘outcome agreement’ with the SFC. These documents “set out what colleges and universities plan to deliver in return for their funding”.

Current guidance for the college sector lists nine measures – one of which is divided into four sub-measures – that will be used to determine the progress of an institution as part of the outcome agreements. They include the amount of learning delivered to those from the most deprived tenth of Scotland, the number of senior phase secondary school pupils studying vocational qualifications, the rates at which HNC/D students successfully progress to degree-level courses, and the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the college itself.

College activities are determined by their outcome agreements and, ultimately, by national government priorities – but the institutions are not run by ministers or by the SFC.

Instead, college regions have boards of management, with membership rules set by the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Act 2013.

Boards must have between 15 and 18 members and include a chair (appointed by the Scottish Government), the principle/CEO of the college, an elected member of teaching staff, an elected member of non-teaching staff, and ‘other members appointed by the board’.

But even this doesn’t tell the whole story, because some college regions have more than one board.

In Glasgow, the three colleges have their own boards, and their own principals, all of which operate under the umbrella of the Glasgow Colleges Regional Board (which also has a CEO). One of Lanarkshire’s two college boards also operates as the regional strategic body. Across the highlands and islands, UHI acts as the regional strategic body, even though some of the colleges within that grouping remain unincorporated into public accounts.

And then there is Orkney College, or UHI Orkney to use it's public title, which is unique in Scotland because it is still owned by the local authority. The college still works under the UHI umbrella, but employees work for the council.

In addition to all of the above, colleges also have principals/CEOs who are ultimately responsible for the day to day operations, and overall financial health, of their institutions. Pay levels for these roles vary, but some principals are paid more than the First Minister, and concerns have been raised about the use of expenses in some cases. The organisation of senior management teams and staffing structure are also different depending on the college.

Finally, there is the matter of political oversight and accountability because, despite their complicated, and partly independent, organisational structures, colleges are still public bodies. Scotland therefore has a Minister for Higher and Further Education, Graeme Dey MSP, and a Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Jenny Gilruth MSP. Ultimately, they are responsible for the State of Scotland's Colleges.