North Glasgow College (Funding Cuts)
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-03226, in the name of Patricia Ferguson, on Scottish Government cuts threaten creativity. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the package of voluntary severances and the possibility of potential redundancies that it understands are being made at North Glasgow College and other colleges across the country; regrets that these cuts might impact on the number and range of courses offered including music production; understands that the cuts, which are being proposed by the Scottish Government, will require the North Glasgow College management to save £823,000 in 2012-13 on top of what it sees as the swingeing cuts of £1 million that the college experienced in 2011-12, considers that these cuts will have an impact on both the level of skill in the workplace and on opportunities for young people, and finds this extremely unhelpful at a time of high youth unemployment when it considers that further education colleges should be able to equip tomorrow’s workers with the skills to help Scotland emerge from the recession.
17:20
I am sure that I am not alone in having attended and enjoyed school awards ceremonies in the past few weeks. It is always inspiring to hear of the achievements of school pupils, to see their delight in the progress that they have made and to witness and share the pride of their families and teachers. For those who are leaving school, it should be a time of great excitement and anticipation as they look forward to a life beyond school and to moving into further or higher education or into training or work. However, for those whose next step should be further education, it has instead been a time of uncertainty that has been caused by the policies and funding choices of the Scottish Government.
I have witnessed at first hand the efforts that have been made by my local college, North Glasgow College, to minimise the effect of the cuts on the young people whom it serves, on the staff whom it employs and on the range of courses and number of places that are available. However, with a cut of £1 million last year and a further reduction of £823,000 this year, something had to give. Like many other colleges, North Glasgow College has sought to make voluntary severance arrangements with its staff and has, as a result, lost 31 jobs in 2011-12 and a further 16 in the current year.
Numbers on paper do not tell the whole story, however, so I will elaborate a little. The loss of 31 jobs last year equated to the loss of some 500 years of experience and a great deal of on-going anxiety for staff. It has also resulted in the number of places on courses as diverse as communications and support for learning being reduced. This year, places have been lost in plumbing, tourism, and music and sound production, among other courses, and I am grateful to all the potential students and their families who have contacted me with their concerns.
The music and sound production courses are popular and have been the subject of media interest. It seems to be ironic that music and sound production courses are being reduced during the year of creative Scotland—a year in which, the Scottish Government tells us, we should all celebrate our culture and our cultural life. I am afraid that the young people who are being denied places on those courses have little to celebrate. Thankfully, North Glasgow College has been able to relocate potential students to other colleges and to other courses, but that has tied up valuable staff time at an important point in the college year. Looking to the future, the college’s senior management team has done its best to ensure that it will be well placed to capitalise on its areas of expertise when formal merger discussions begin.
North Glasgow College is the only college to be located entirely within my constituency, so it is the one that I know best and the one that concerns me most. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to check the situation concerning the other Glasgow colleges, and the figures are staggering. In 2011-12, Glasgow’s colleges lost 39,258 weighted student units of measurement—the recognised measure that is used to work such things out. To put that in perspective, I note that 39,258 weighted SUMs equates to almost exactly the number of SUMs that Stow College has in 2012-13 and is more than the total at John Wheatley College. It is, in effect, the equivalent of losing a Stow College or a John Wheatley College completely. An entire college’s complement of student units of measurement has been wiped out because the Scottish Government does not consider the work of those colleges to be a priority.
I seem to recall that the Scottish Government promised that there would be an education or training place for every young person in Scotland. However, there are currently 12,700 unemployed young people in the 16-to-24 age group in Glasgow. Where are the employment, training or education places for them? Let us remember that 12,700 young people are unemployed at a time when there are 39,258 weighted SUMs fewer in Glasgow’s colleges. If the Government was living up to its manifesto commitment, it would not be cutting college budgets in the way that it is. These are, after all, the very people who will help to work us out of recession.
We can judge a Government by the priorities that it sets and the choices that it makes. In its support and encouragement of our young people, the Government has been found wanting; in its recognition of the value of college staff, the Government has been found wanting; and in its commitment to taking young people out of unemployment, the Government has failed dramatically.
I very much hope that the minister will, in closing, be able to offer at least a glimmer of hope for our young people, colleges and communities.
17:26
I congratulate Patricia Ferguson on securing the debate. It gives me an opportunity to relay the concerns of the lecturers in the sound and music department at North Glasgow College, who were pleasantly surprised to hear from my office that this debate is taking place today. I am delighted that we can move the issue forward on a cross-party basis. I have written to Mike Russell and Fiona Hyslop about my concerns.
I have been in regular contact with lecturers in recent months and, having met them, I am well aware of how change at North Glasgow is affecting them. Nobody wants courses to be reduced anywhere, but duplication of course provision and cuts to the Scottish Government’s revenue from Westminster have led to tough choices.
It is worth noting that the number of full-time equivalent courses at the college has increased since the Scottish National Party came to power. The college received around £8.5 million for course provision and student funding in 2012-13. Although that does not negate the current financial challenges that are faced by the college, some of which where outlined by Patricia Ferguson, it is important to put that investment on the record.
I note gently that no other political party has proposed a different budget settlement on further education and that the FE sector is stronger than the one that was inherited in 2007 by the SNP Government. Once more, although that does not negate the current challenges, it is important to put it on the record.
I want to look past party politics and to voice my specific concerns, following meetings with the sound and music department at North Glasgow College. I met the college’s principal, Ronnie Knox, and sought a clear explanation from him on the rationale for course alterations in the college. Many believe that with a reduction of around 10 FTE staff to around five FTE staff, the sound and music department has taken more than its fair share of course reductions.
A final round of cuts was recently announced, and £45,000 worth of cuts was identified in the sound and music department. Staff were interviewed to find out which staff member may have to be redeployed. Staff were also informed that 20 places on courses would be reprovisioned to other colleges in the sector. However, staff were constructive and formulated an alternative business plan that would not only have allowed the department to maintain its current staffing levels and course provision, but would have raised additional revenue, including using money from individual learning accounts and other funding streams to make up the shortfall. Unfortunately, the college rejected the plan.
I stress that all staff members in the department remain loyal and committed to the college and the students. I welcome North Glasgow College’s on-going commitment to a policy of no compulsory redundancies. There is an understanding that course reductions may be a reality in the short term. However, many people feel that the process has not been handled as well or communicated as effectively as it could have been.
Ronnie Knox has assured me that he will provide additional information about how the process was taken forward. He has also given reassurances that the sound and music department has a future at the college. However, I would like to put on record why there have been concerns in that department in particular.
Will the member give way?
I really do not have time, Ms Ferguson. I apologise.
A draft options appraisal document on college merger that was produced on behalf of North Glasgow College stated that
“Areas of the curriculum North Glasgow College would be prepared to give up”
include “Sound production”, which is part of a department that has received a £2 million investment from the Scottish Government and has state-of-the-art facilities.
You should be drawing to a close now, please.
Mr Knox has reassured me that that is not the Government position.
We want some reassurances from the Scottish Government about the level of transparency around all course alterations—not only in North Glasgow College but across the country. We also want acknowledgment of the specific place of the sound and music department in North Glasgow College, given that Glasgow is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation city of music.
17:30
I am grateful to be called to speak in this important debate and congratulate Patricia Ferguson on securing it.
The issue of college cuts has probably been one of the biggest in my postbag over the past year, and I am sure that other members will have been similarly contacted. However, over recent months, the e-mails have changed from expressions of uncertainty and unhappiness about the Scottish National Party’s cutting of college budgets in general to students asking for my help with specific instances of how the SNP’s cuts are affecting their courses or their ability to enrol in certain courses, because those courses are disappearing altogether.
Scotland’s colleges play a vital role in our communities and can provide transformational opportunities for young people and others by providing training for work as well, as education for its own sake, in a way that is accessible to the widest possible range of potential students.
Not all colleges provide the same courses and not all courses need to be on offer at every college. However, in the case of North Glasgow College, I have been contacted by current and prospective students who had planned to study music production. Many of those individuals come from the north Glasgow area, but many others come from further afield, including one who e-mailed me from Inverness.
Music production is a popular course, but it is a competitive subject choice, and one in which opportunities are limited. North Glasgow College has a good reputation in the subject and I am pleased with the efforts that the management of the college have made to sustain their involvement in that subject. The college has excellent music facilities that I understand were recently praised by the Deputy First Minister when she was on a visit to the college, I presume that she was unaware that the SNP’s college cuts would affect their future use.
College cuts also have an impact on the FE workforce. It was therefore disappointing that, last year, when the Further Education Lecturers Association organised a meeting with all Glasgow’s MSPs to discuss the impact of college cuts in Glasgow, not one SNP member of this Parliament showed up to defend the cabinet secretary’s decisions on college cuts.
In securing the debate, I believe that Patricia Ferguson has provided an opportunity for the SNP to come clean about the impact that its college cuts are already having on communities. Although I always listen to SNP back benchers seeking to take the party politics out of a situation when they do not wish to defend their Government, I have to say to Bob Doris that, in reference to ILAs, which he mentioned, he should carefully consider the changes to ILAs that will come in on 1 July and which will have a serious impact on students’ ability to continue their studies.
In a time of high youth unemployment, cuts to Scotland’s colleges and courses such as those that are offered at North Glasgow College are nothing short of a disgrace.
17:33
I, too, thank Patricia Ferguson for bringing this debate to the chamber. Members’ business debates have traditionally been consensual, but I think that this one is unlikely to be so. However, I harbour a hope that, across the chamber, we can perhaps coalesce around some areas that might point the way towards a better direction of travel.
My starting point is a reflection on our Scottish colleges of further education. Historically, they have been unsung and underrated. Of course, the reality was different. Colleges were the accessible, physical presence of further education, providing essential skills in a wide range of trades and occupations and offering school leavers the opportunity to develop and expand on existing educational attainment. Indeed, since being given autonomy of governance, Scotland’s colleges have made an outstanding contribution to education and are to be warmly congratulated on doing so.
In Scotland, we have many colleges straddling the country and demonstrating that vital component of local access, and many local economies are crying out for the trades and occupations for which colleges can educate people. It is important that colleges can also, as we know, be the entry point for transition to higher education that can, again, offer affordable local access. I am in no doubt about the vital and flexible educational role that our colleges play or about the importance of their local accessibility. Even with distance learning, that physical presence matters.
That is my starting point, and I hope that there is universal acceptance of those virtues. I think that it is generally understood that our young people have a particular reliance on college education. Indeed, Patricia Ferguson, Drew Smith and—to be fair—Bob Doris commented on that.
The Scottish Government seems to accept the propositions that I have outlined. Certainly it was, in the most recent election campaign, supportive of the National Union of Students’ reclaim your voice campaign, which among other things was committed to protecting graduate numbers and college places. However, the pledge on student places is one thing, but I fear that the reality is different and troubling. According to Scotland’s Colleges, the reduction in the further education budget will lead to an estimated 20,000 student places being lost. In 2011 alone, approximately 1,000 people were made redundant in the college sector. So, unless they had been twiddling their thumbs, which I am sure they were not, that must have had an impact on college places.
Will Annabel Goldie give way?
I am very short of time, but I will briefly give way.
I thank Annabel Goldie for that.
Annabel Goldie has provided a number of estimates, but will she nonetheless acknowledge that in actual terms the numbers show that full-time-equivalent places have been maintained in Scotland’s colleges nationally?
I note the minister’s assertion, but I think that what troubles the rest of us is what is actually happening throughout college campuses at the moment and what projections from informed sources suggest is going to happen. To expand my argument, the difficulty for the Government is that it has reduced the current support budget for bursaries and general student support to £84.2 million from August of this year. That is another aspect that is hitting young people and their ability to contemplate going to college.
I am not diminishing the challenges that confront the Scottish Government—which I accept are significant—but it needs to clarify its focus on the further education sector and its strategy for the sector. The Government knew the state of the public finances when it made pledges that it cannot now afford, and it has even failed to protect the budget share going to further education, which has gone down from 2 per cent to 1.8 per cent—its lowest share in years.
The Government has refused—it has its own political reasons for doing so—to find more resource for higher education through a graduate contribution. I think that that is why it has been forced to do a smash-and-grab raid on further education. Quite simply, at this time our colleges are living from hand to mouth and the Scottish Government needs to do better by them.
17:38
I thank Patricia Ferguson for giving us the opportunity yet again to put on record in the Parliament our appreciation of the work that colleges across Scotland are doing. It is clear from the many debates and questions that we have heard in the chamber over recent months that everyone knows that colleges have a unique role in trying to address the problem of rising youth unemployment and ensuring that this generation of young Scots are properly equipped to make their contribution to 21st century Scotland.
Unfortunately, however, what Patricia Ferguson outlined earlier is depressingly all too familiar to most of us. In fact, if others were being honest, we could say that it is all too familiar to all of us. We can recount similar tales from colleges across the country, whether it is James Watt College in Greenock, Reid Kerr College in Paisley, Anniesland College and Cardonald College in Glasgow, or colleges in Edinburgh, Dundee or Aberdeen: colleges are telling us that they face real problems in trying to maintain student numbers and, more significant, the quality of what they have to offer.
I understand why Bob Doris says that we should put aside party politics on this issue. However, Annabel Goldie is right to say that the Government made pledges that, in effect, it cannot afford. The Government has made decisions to commit money to other areas and has therefore ensured that colleges do not have the money that they need to maintain services. Bob Doris is right to talk about tough choices, but the problem is that the Scottish Government made the choice or decision to cut the colleges’ budgets to such an extent that we are now seeing reductions right across Scotland.
Bob Doris said that the FE sector is now stronger than the sector that the Scottish Government inherited. If, by the word “stronger”, he means that more lecturers are now being made redundant, that is fine: the sector is indeed stronger. If he means that there are fewer staff to deliver the courses, or that fewer courses and places are available, the sector is, of course, stronger. However, that would be a completely and utterly perverse definition of the word.
I hear in my constituency and from others across Scotland that people are worried. I have received an e-mail from a lecturer at Reid Kerr College, who participated in the recent lobby of the Scottish Parliament. That e-mail said that the staff completely refute what the Scottish Government is saying about its approach to further education.
I agree with Bob Doris. Let us put party politics aside by all means. I would have thought that it would be possible to forge consensus across all the political parties on the issue of cuts to colleges, and to say that we will make Scotland’s colleges a priority in the next financial year and find the wherewithal to ensure that they can invest in training a generation that desperately needs our support. If we decide not to do that, that will be a wilful decision on our part. It will be a decision to abandon those people in their moment of need.
I hope that we can rise above party politics and do the right thing for Scotland’s young people.
17:42
I, too, congratulate Patricia Ferguson on securing the debate. However, I would appreciate some sensible suggestions from the Labour Party on how we can address the unprecedented cuts to Scotland’s budget. Its new best friend, Miss Goldie—
Will the member take an intervention?
No. I have only just started. I will take an intervention later.
The member asked for suggestions. I am happy to give her a suggestion.
I have just started. I will take an intervention later.
As I was saying, we are suffering unprecedented cuts to Scotland’s budget. We know that Annabel Goldie’s party wants to charge higher education students £9,000 a year in fees. Perhaps Labour wants to do that as well—perhaps that is what it means by the phrase “better together”. There is a tough choice. Is that what Labour is asking for?
I will take Hugh Henry’s intervention now.
By heavens. Thank you.
On finding money for Scotland’s colleges, £75 million a year is being spent on providing free university tuition to European Union students because of decisions that the Scottish Government made. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning promised the Parliament that he would solve that problem, but he has still not solved it. If he came to us with the solution, that £75 million could be invested in Scotland’s colleges.
I think that Hugh Henry knows that those are weasel words. He is well aware that a European law is involved. The matter has nothing to do with any decision that the Scottish Government has made.
I take exception to Patricia Ferguson’s suggestion in the title of her motion that the Government is undermining creativity. In fact, creativity is thriving as never before under the Government. The emphasis on offering opportunities to young people is particularly tangible.
I want to say something about culture before I address the wider issue of colleges. I draw Patricia Ferguson’s attention to the new Scots fund, which will put £50 million into emerging young talent in creativity, enterprise and sport over the next four years. We have also put £10 million into the youth music initiative in order to carry that on this year, and Patricia Ferguson will know that there is a major capital investment of £5 million in the new national youth arts centre in Glasgow.
I do not want to go into the detailed operational decisions at the Glasgow colleges because that is not the area that I represent, but I suspect that we are not getting the full picture from Patricia Ferguson. The managements of the colleges recently welcomed the merger of John Wheatley College, North Glasgow College and Stow College. Andy Woolley, chair of the board of management at John Wheatley College, was quoted in The Scotsman as saying:
“Our board have endorsed this joint approach to mergers and we are delighted to note similar endorsement from the boards of North Glasgow and Stow Colleges. We at John Wheatley College look forward to working with our partners with a view to creating a new, dynamic college which will deliver a high-quality learning experience for all the communities of north-east Glasgow and beyond.”
Regionalisation of colleges is about investing in excellence, and the three colleges that are merging in north Glasgow all have great strengths. Stow College in particular will be well known to many members with an interest in popular culture as a centre of excellence for the creative industries, and I would expect that to continue once the merger is complete. There are approximately 1,000 learners in the faculty of creative industries at the college, and I know from contacts in the music business what a high reputation the sound production courses there have.
However, colleges have a responsibility to ensure that they are training young people for jobs that exist, so numbers have to reflect what future opportunities are likely to be in the industry. To do otherwise would be dishonest and unfair to our young people.
On colleges more generally, the 2012-13 budget, which the Scottish Parliament passed on 8 February, includes provision for an extra £8 million of funding for colleges and £11.4 million for student support.
You should be drawing to a close soon.
By 2014-15, further education spending in Scotland will be about £91 per head of population, compared with about £62 per head of population in England. I draw Miss Goldie’s attention to that. The better-together parties need to come up with real solutions. One would be to give Scotland control of its own budget and all its resources so that the tough decisions that they deplore do not have to be quite so tough.
17:47
Like others, I congratulate Patricia Ferguson on raising an important issue that faces many constituencies throughout Scotland. This might not be the consensual debate that would be within the comfort zone of some of the members opposite, but it is an important debate because the issue faces many communities throughout Scotland.
One of the challenges that we face in our constituencies lies in ensuring that we have good local colleges that can deliver the training programmes that people need to get out of unemployment. That is crucial to communities. The constituency that I represent, Glasgow Provan, has been well served by both John Wheatley College and North Glasgow College. I considered it a great privilege to be involved with both of those colleges when they invested more than £80 million in a capital programme to build three new colleges. They were commissioned and built during the years of the Labour-led Executive from 1999. Those iconic buildings were built in areas where working-class communities face some of the most severe challenges in respect of unemployment.
I remind the minister of the differences that exist in Scotland. Unemployment in my constituency, Glasgow Provan, is double that in the constituency of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. To me, that represents some of the severe challenges that we face in our communities and the need for money to be invested in those communities to ensure that we deal with some of those challenges.
In respect of positive solutions, of course we are united in the Parliament in forming an alliance to deal with youth unemployment and indeed adult unemployment. I do not think that there is one member who does not want to tackle unemployment. However, it is surely perverse, in the economic position that we find ourselves in, that we are not investing in the opportunities that can exist in colleges to get us out of the recession.
I ask the Government to consider the lack of parity that exists between higher education and further education in Scotland. I was appalled to hear the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning tell a group of John Wheatley College students that he was very firm in his view that parity did not exist and that his commitment was to higher rather than further education. The challenge that faces this Parliament is ensuring that that lack of parity does not exist in future and that we give every student in Scotland, no matter whether they are in further or higher education, a genuinely equal chance to prosper in their local community and a proper opportunity to improve their educational attainment.
17:50
I was not going to speak in this debate, but I have been appalled by what the Labour Opposition has been saying. I have always had great respect for Patricia Ferguson and thank her for introducing this subject for debate, if only to see exactly what the Opposition has to say on the matter. Basically, the debate has been nothing more than a moan and an attack on the SNP Government.
The Opposition parties were in power from 1999. Paul Martin highlighted the differences in his constituency, but when Labour was in power in Springburn, Maryhill, Baillieston and Provan, what did it do?
Will the member give way?
I am sorry, but no.
What did Labour do in the years for which it was in power to help our young people in disadvantaged and other areas get on and meet their educational aspirations? Absolutely nothing. Labour members should not give me their crocodile tears on this matter.
Will the member give way?
No.
I am a great proponent of colleges; indeed, I came up through the college route. I did an access course at Cardonald College and then went to Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Glasgow. I am very much in favour of and speak to colleges. Stow College is in my constituency—the other college that has been mentioned is not—and, having spoken to Robert McGrory, I know that although the college is quite annoyed and upset it is nevertheless willing to work with people to get on and ensure that it has a future for students. I have visited Stow College, Metropolitan College and Central College and the answer to the situation is, as Joan McAlpine has pointed out, amalgamation. The letter from North Glasgow College, John Wheatley College and Stow College makes it clear that their boards have endorsed the merger; Anniesland College, Metropolitan College and Central College, too, have endorsed it.
It is clearly important that North Glasgow College, Stow College and John Wheatley College work together on this merger—and not just at a principal and senior manager level. Given my concerns that the staff and students are not being engaged in the merger, does the member think that the Scottish Government has a role to play in ensuring that we have a real and integrated process?
Everyone—not just the Scottish Government, but local elected politicians—has a duty to speak to the staff and other people in the colleges. The way in which Patricia Ferguson started this debate does not help the consensus one bit. The Opposition is playing a blame game; it has no answers. We need to get together and ensure that the colleges work together.
I thank Ms White for taking my intervention. She and Ms McAlpine have suggested that I have, in some way, criticised the idea of merger. My only comment about merger in my motion and in my speech was to point out that North Glasgow College was working hard to best position itself for a future merger. I did not criticise the merger itself. I would also be grateful if Ms White could point out the inaccuracies in my speech, if she can find them.
I did not criticise Patricia Ferguson one bit about her comments about the merger; I was criticising her for not working together on this matter and not pointing out that the merger represents a way forward that has been accepted and welcomed by colleges. Instead of using further education as a political football as the Opposition parties have done, we should be looking for positive outcomes and trying to get round the table to find out how we can bring positive attitudes into further education.
17:54
The Scottish Government welcomes the opportunity to debate this motion. I recognise Patricia Ferguson’s close interest in North Glasgow College as member for Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn.
Last December, I had the pleasure of visiting North Glasgow College and seeing the tremendous work that is done there in what are often challenging circumstances. I commend the contribution that it makes to the people of north Glasgow. Under the principalship of Ronnie Knox, the college provides life-changing opportunities for many people who have suffered disadvantage or endured deprivation. At long last, the college has an estate that matches its ambition.
The motion highlights—and this has never been a secret—that North Glasgow College, like every other college, has had to withstand budget reductions that we would have rather not implemented but which were made necessary by Westminster’s unnecessary and unwarranted reduction of £3.3 billion in Scotland’s block grant over this spending review period. The lodger of the motion seems curiously coy—or perhaps I should say “loyal”—about mentioning those cuts.
The motion goes on to tell us, in a way that falls some way short of what I would describe as rapier precision, that it “understands” that there is the “possibility” of “potential redundancies.”
Of course, I do not minimise the impact on college staffing caused by the reductions that we have been forced to seek. However, we have made absolutely clear our expectations of colleges. We do not believe that there is any need for any member of staff to be made compulsorily redundant and we have said that to every college principal. With that in mind, I have—as has been mentioned—had representations from Bob Doris MSP and others, who have urged that, whatever decisions colleges make about mergers, they should make them in a transparent way.
However, we do not have the power to compel or direct colleges in what they do, as Drew Smith and Hugh Henry know fine well. That power used to exist and, if it still did, we might use it from time to time. However, ministers’ ability to hold colleges directly to account through a power of direction was removed in 2006 by the Labour minister at the time, Allan Wilson. We will take no lectures about the role of Government in removing the threat of redundancy, but I will take an intervention.
Will the minister confirm that Scottish Government departments are employing people on fixed-term contracts, paying them off, and then replacing them by bringing in new staff, in order to avoid saying that they are making people redundant?
As the member knows, the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council makes decisions about the funding of individual institutions. To claim that the Government is directly responsible for decisions that colleges make about their own staff is slightly disingenuous.
As I am sure every member knows, we have embarked on the most ambitious reform programme of colleges since 1992. In recent months, we have heard much criticism of the funding settlement for colleges. Unfortunately, we have heard rather less about the additional £40 million that has since been identified for investment in the college sector for 2012-13. I do not in any way seek to minimise the challenges that face all our colleges, but I believe that that is a remarkable achievement, given that we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis that most of us can remember.
I am pleased that Patricia Ferguson has identified in her motion that the purpose of a college is to equip young people with the skills necessary to drive forward Scotland’s economy. It must surely stand to reason, therefore, that college provision should be closely aligned to the needs of the labour market. The Government’s position is clear: we have asked colleges to refocus their provision on courses that increase employability by delivering the skills that are most highly prized by employers. That will, of course, mean that colleges will sometimes have to look critically at courses that perhaps do meet a specific economic need. That is a strategic decision that goes right to the heart of tackling the scourge of youth unemployment.
A number of members highlighted the role of colleges in addressing our economic needs and the needs of the young unemployed in particular. Annabel Goldie made that point, even if she somewhat undermined it by calling for an end to free education and claiming that college student support had been reduced to £84 million when it has been maintained at £95 million.
We are already reaping the benefits of some of the measures that have been taken. The latest figures show a 9 per cent increase in the number of full-time students studying advanced-level courses and a 1 per cent increase in the number of full-time non-advanced courses. Those are the true indicators of what we are achieving in the college sector: better courses and better attainment for better life chances.
The success of the college sector should rightly be measured by the quality and economic relevance of provision, not wholly by simplistically counting courses.
The debate has been useful. It has not been entirely straightforward at times, but we have heard informed contributions from Sandra White, Joan McAlpine and Paul Martin—he was making an informed contribution until he resorted to the straightforward untruth that the cabinet secretary had told young people in Scotland that they should not go to college. He should reconsider that outlandish claim.
In conclusion, our vision is for a college sector in which learners who complete a course can be confident they have achieved a prestigious qualification that is highly prized by successful employers in Glasgow and beyond.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. For the Official Report, I did not make the comment that the minister said that I did. I made absolutely clear that the cabinet secretary had stated that there would be a lack of parity and that his commitment was to higher rather than further education.
I thank the member for his point of order, which I am sure he is well aware is not a point of order. Nonetheless, he has made his comment and it is on the record.
Meeting closed at 18:02.