Go outside where you are, take something to write with, and find a comfortable place to sit for a few moments. Take in your surroundings.
What do you notice about your place?
What do you notice about the natural environment and the human-made things around you?
Now, consider what your place was like in the past. Then, switch your perspective and consider your place and its future.
Draw, write down some words, gather details – capture what you notice and imagine in a way that works for you.
Now, close your eyes, imagine you are blowing the seeds of a giant puffball dandelion flower, and make a wish for the future of your place. What would your wish be?
I went to stand outside, but it’s pretty rainy so I didn’t stay out for long. I noticed a hole in the fence though, where a fox had dug a path out of our garden last night. However, I appreciated the quiet of the morning – no workmen using powertools, no neigbours shouting over the fence. So here’s my wish for my garden.
I hope that the birds keep visiting and brightening my day with their songs
I hope that the brambles keep growing despite the fox’s antics
I hope the bugs find a cosy place to rest amongst the fallen leaves
And I hope that we can call this home for many years to come
The one I use most is sight, and my camera is my superpowe – I often use it to help me to focus on details of my surroundings. On Saturday, as we were out at a nature reserve watching a heron, I saw how the zoom was catching the colours of this beech tree, with a seed head looking like a butterfly skeleton at the bottom right hand of the image.
Nature is beautiful in every season. Today, as I have a day off, I will head outside in the crisp autumn sun and plant some bulbs. Aloha!
This is just a short reflection on a session I facilitated at the Jisc Student Experts Meeting last week in Birmingham. As part of the next phase of the Beyond Blended programme, and based on feedback from our pilot institutions we are looking at developing an assessment and feedback view of our four modes of participation model. So I use the session to get groups to think about the types of assessment they currently use in each of the modes, and what mode feedback is given in – so lots of post-it note action! This was followed by a bit more of an indepth discussion around assessment and feedback and the opportunities/challenges for both educators and students.
In all the talk of (Gen)AI just now, particularly around assessment and feedback, it does seem that there is a default answer and expectation of training, particularly for staff. How many principles, frameworks have staff training/development in them? Now I’m not for a moment saying that isn’t needed, but at the same time as this is mentioned, there is the flip side of the conversation around things moving so quickly how can we, not just catch up, but keep apace with AI system developments. We’re also at a point (in the UK at least) where there is “a lot” of change in the system, with thousands of staff leaving the sector (and not always voluntarily).
Timetables are already full and with added pressures and uncertainties of staff and student numbers, time is even more precious. In this context quite often the first thing to go when staff are time pressed is any kind of CPD. So where and how do we find the time for relevant and useful AI training? A couple of hours aren’t really going to cut it with AI are they? It’s not a tick box exercise.
There are so many aspects that really need to be given quite a bit of time so that our staff are able to be critically informed to make effective, ethical disciplinary relevant design decisions for their students. In these uncertain times, trust is more important than ever. So I do think that having trusted places, spaces, platforms where we can start to explore, critique, challenge, and decide where and when to use (or not use) GenAI is increasingly important.
At a strategic level this could be institutions being really explicit about what training models are being used by institutional systems, how is data being process/used. What choices are actually available for staff and students in terms of using /opting out of GenAI systems? Who decides? We also need to think about how we make our educational spaces and places (physical and digital) trusted spaces for staff and students. Universities should be places of trust and safety for both educators and students.
So I think we need to have more conversations around what trusted educational spaces look like in the 2020’s, how we create, support and develop them. In terms of our Six Pillar for Beyond Blended, the top half of our diagram has really resonated with our pilot projects- particularly place and pace of learning but maybe it’s time to make trust a more explicit part of this model and the conversations it is supporting.
Where do YOU stand? Share a six-word story about your place or location (and maybe we can even guess where it is?!) Feel free to add art or be creative with your six word story.
I wrote one about the city I call home:
Rain always near: dear green place
The image at the top is taken through my study window looking out at my garden on a typical Glasgow morning
Despite delivering essential vocational training and community social mobility, Scotland’s Further Education (FE) college sector is still facing an unprecedented financial crisis. While recent targeted, short-term funding streams (such as the New Flexible Workforce Development Fund and Defence Technical Excellence Colleges) provide welcome project opportunities, they do not close the sector’s core operational funding gap. Baseline funding cuts threaten the structural viability of local colleges across Scotland. Urgent policy rebalancing across tertiary funding is required.
Key Financial Realities
7%+ Real-Terms Cut this year Audit Scotland reports that college sector funding has fallen by over 7% in real terms over the last five years. If you look over last 10 years there is a greater funding collapse. Audit Scotland's briefing paper, Scotland's Colleges 2025 shows that Scottish Government revenue funding for colleges decreased by 20 per cent in real terms over the five-year period from 2021/22 to 2025/26.
Widespread Operating Deficits: More than half of Scotland’s colleges operate in deficit, relying on emergency Scottish Funding Council (SFC) cash advances to maintain short-term liquidity. They can't plan ahead.
Diminishing Provision: Workforce contraction via voluntary severance has coincided with course credits and student headcounts dropping to 10-year lows. That basically means less places for prospective students. Part time learning numbers have plummeted. Evening provision for reskilling adults has almost entirely disappeared.
The Policy Disparity: Colleges vs. Universities
Fiscal Control & Governance: Colleges operate as direct instruments of government policy under SFC control. Unlike universities—which enjoy greater fiscal freedom and research autonomy college boards and leadership face direct Scottish Government intervention during fiscal distress.
Targeted Grants vs. Baseline Stability: Short-term, ring-fenced initiatives (e.g., £10m New FWDF or £20m DTECs) enable rapid, employer-led upskilling, but cannot cover permanent staff costs, rising energy bills, or essential campus maintenance.
Equitable Distribution: The commitment to "free" higher education has created an unintended structural imbalance, diverting core tertiary resources away from lifelong vocational learning and local college pathways.
Key Action Recommendations for Policy Makers
Equalise Core Tertiary Funding Rates : Establish rate parity per candidate across Further Education, Higher Education, and work-based learning to ensure public funds follow the learner fairly and make the system make full use of SCQF. Track learners across life long learning by full adoption of the Scottish Candidate Number SCN.
Re-evaluate Regional Governance & Autonomy : Re-evaluate Regional Governance & Learn from Glasgow’s De-regionalisation. The dissolution of the Glasgow Colleges Regional Board (GCRB) proved that adding an administrative "middle tier" above colleges creates unnecessary overhead without protecting frontline budgets. Remaining regional structures across Scotland must either be given genuine, ring-fenced budget autonomy to serve their local economies, or be streamlined to allow direct SFC funding to frontline college delivery.
Align University Funding to National Standards: Differentiate public university subsidies by tying funding formulas to national occupational standards and articulation pathways from regional colleges. Academic autonomy should not extend to ignoring national occupational standards and SCQF.
Mandate FE Inclusion in National Capital & Innovation Projects : Ensure major economic and innovation investments (e.g., NMIS, Data Lab, DTECs) structurally embed regional colleges as core funded partners, not secondary outputs
Expand Open Educational Resources (OER): Drive cross-sector adoption of UNESCO open education principles to widen access across regional communities. Ensure that all Colleges and Universities share all learning materials through open respositories and practice. To foster mutual support and collaboration and ultimately to support learners and teachers - wherever they are.
Stop the pretence that the patient(s) can heal itself : There are currently two projects going on in Scotland, both sponsored by the Scottish Govt - The College Sector of the Future ( for Colleges) and for Universities the Future Framework for the Sustainability and Success of Scotland's Universities. In isolation neither of the sectors can find a solution on their own. As they are both in the new tertiary system scope here for one project.
Joe Wilson has 40 years experience of the College sector and among other roles spent 15 years serving on three different College Boards of management.
The UN have a challenge for people aged 5-19. We might not be, ahem, quite that young, but we can still participate here:
Create a poster that shows what “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” means to you. Show us how innovation – big or small, old or new – can help feed the world, protect the planet, and build a better future for everyone.
There has been a new release on Glow Blogs, dealing with some issues, updating themes and plugins.
Fixes
The Tiled Gallery Block is again available on Classic-themed sites. See the Tiled Gallery information on our blocks information site.
Problems with the appearance of widgets in the editor have been fixed.
A problem where raw HTML was displayed on some posts listed on Local Authority home pages has been fixed.
Jetpack blocks which are not suitable for Glow Blogs have been removed. These would have required linking with a WordPress.com account, involving payments and or external data storage.
Jetpack Custom Content Types are again available to activate. The activation process has changed a little, we have details on this post.
Plugin Updates
The following plugins have been updated, mostly minor bug and security fixes. These updates should not affect functionality.
Display Posts Shortcode
3D Flipbook Lite
Classic Editor
Contact Block Form
Google Translator Widget
MegaMenu
Simple Local Avatars
WordPress Importer
WP Accessibility
WP Post Ratings
Embed Plus for YouTube
Translations
Google have changed their permissions to limit the use of their translation widget limiting it to non profit sites. This had stopped the translation service working in some cases in Glow Blogs. We have now updated the Google Language Translator to the most recent version. This has fixed the problem. Details of how to use the plugin are here Google Language Translator.
Themes
Nearly all of the Twenty series of themes have been updated to the latest versions. Again, this should not affect basic functionality. Accessibility has been improved for some themes.
We remind everyone about our recent Theme Advice. We advise people to choose from the Twenty series of Themes.
We remind everyone about our recent