How much longer?

On the trip into work this morning I heard on the news that the Scottish Education Minister is putting pressure on my work to enter a merger we have already said no to. Apparently Edinburgh, which alsoe serves East, West and Mid Lothian plus Fife and further afield, is only really a big enough region to support one college??? Thsi despite the fact that we have four Universities.

Of course much of it stems from the Government's white paper in which a team of people with vested interest in the HE sector, and no-one representing the FE sector, basically said that HE is wonderful and FE needs systemic change.

I won't dispute that some of our Universities do wonderful things, but many more are on the slide. Two of our supposedly more prestigious Universities dropped off the Times Education list of 150 top universities in this years table. Add to that the fact that graduate training schemes have been massively slashed since the global economic crisis began and I don't think it's just FE which needs change. Although that's not strictly fair as in their mass cost-cutting excercise I don't doubt that there'll be unis for the chop too.

What irks me most is that I voted for the SNP because I believed their rhetoric about wanting to do the best for Scotland so it feels like a stab in the back that they now seem intent on dismantling large tracts of the education sector. If the suggestions which were being made were to improve teh standard of education I'm sure it would be a lot easier to deal with, however they are being made to cut costs pure and simple. Allegedly as much as 40% in real terms in some cases.

At a time when more people than in several years are being made redundant pulling the rug of access to re-training out from under them isn't just stabbing the sector in the back it's stabbing the Scottish people in the back. Especially when you consider that the priority, according to this new white paper, is to give places to 16 - 19 year olds, once their applications are dealt with then start looking at 19 - 24 year olds. If there's any spaces left after that the over 24 market can fight over the scraps or be left to teh scrap heap. Of course I do wonder what the government will do once those over 24 year olds who can't get access to the reduced number of college places, along with the media, realise that a policy like that is in contravention of last year's Equality Act?

Back to the merger though, the minister has stated that it's about saving money. Of course the only way you can really save money through a merger is by cutting jobs. Realistically though with cuts of up to forty percent that's going to happen throughout the sector regardless. So what of the SNP manifesto pledge on no compulsory redundancies? Well in true politician stlye it's getting blamed on a decision of the previous administration. To me this makes the party I voted for sound more and more like the current Westminster government who I most certainly did not vote for. I'm sorry but it wasn't the previous administration who elected to make such swingeing cuts to education and basically singled out FE as a scapegoat for the problems was it? Why it the phrase "worth about as much as a politician's promise" springing to mind?

There's a major EiS meeting planned to form a response to the white paper. I'm not alone amongst my colleagues in the EiS in voting for the SNP last time out and I know from the tone amongst colleagues at work that I won't be alone in not voting for them next time as things stand. If I were in the SNP I wouldn't be counting on many votes from EiS members next time out. Let's just hope there hasn't been irreparable damage to an education sector, which I know from professional visits to Delhi University, and colleagues trips elsewhere round the world, has historically been held in very high regard round the world by the time we get to the next Scottish elections