College Funding in Scotland Revisted.⤴

from @ Experimental Blog


In 2024 I posted about the ongoing crisis around College funding. Things have not really got much better - so time for an update. 

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. 

World Food Day 2026⤴

from

World Food Day
World Food Day flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Today’s TDC says

Today is World Food Day

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.

Mine’s at the top of the post.

Lemon Poem⤴

from

350/365 Lemon Meyer
350/365 Lemon Meyer flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
Today’s TDC says

Write a three line poem about lemons without using the following words: lemon, yellow, round, fruit, citrus, tart, juicy, peel, and sour.

I wrote a haiku:

Sunlight on a branch
Zesty tingles on the tongue
Summer in a glass

Glow Blogs Update October 2026⤴

from @ Glow Blog Help

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.

History of Advertising Trust turns 50⤴

from

Frogs in advertising
Frogs in advertising flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Today’s TDC says

The History of Advertising Trust is an archive of 50 years of British adverts. Visit and revel in video and audio commercials, print advertising and ghost signs (no idea what these are, me neither, but they sound intriguing!).

Make some art based on what you find there – maybe a mashup image, a gif or a poem. Also see this Grauniad article if you’d like to know more.

As I often do, I searched on the key word ‘frog’ and got 31 results.

Harebells⤴

from

Harebells
Harebells flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA 2.0) license

Today’s TDC says

I don’t know if you have ever read the old versions of fairy tales or not, but some of these familiar stories are pretty gruesome. Walt Disney became famous for taking these very old tales and sanitizing them for modern youngsters. One of my favorite examples comes from the tale of Cinderella when the prince comes looking for the owner of the lost slipper and a stepsister tries it on.

…The eldest went first into the room where the slipper was, and wanted to try it on, and the mother stood by. But her big toe could not go into it, and the shoe was altogether much too small for her. Then the mother said, “Never mind, cut it off. When you are queen you will not care about toes; you will not want to go on foot.” So the silly girl cut her big toe off, and squeezed the shoe on, and went to the king’s son…

For today’s Daily Create, find a suitable fairy tale (Project Gutenberg has loads of fairy tale books) and create something depicting a scene from the story. It can be a drawing, a photograph, a sound recording, whatever suits your fancy. Also, it is ok to go a little dark with this so long as you keep within the bounds of good taste and safe-for-workedness. Of course, you can also go with the modern-sanitized approach as well. And they lived happily ever after.

As I read about the story of Rapunzel I realised that Rapunzel was actually a plant

When Rapunzel’s mother is pregnant with her, she has the worst pregnancy cravings ever for the green for which the little girl will eventually be named — which, as luck would have it, grows bountifully in the garden of the witch next door. She convinces her husband to steal some for her; however, the witch catches him. She says he can have all the rapunzel he wants if he’ll give her the baby when it’s born. He agrees to the trade.

So I searched for pictures of rapunzel and noticed how similar the flowers are to Scottish bluebells (which I knew as harebells when I lived in the north of England). I love these little flowers when I see them peeking through grass or growing between rocks. At the top of the page is a photo I took on Mull 10 years ago. Below is one I took in Findhorn last year.

Harebells
Harebells flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Rain or shine, your city/town/burg is beautiful. Show us the magic⤴

from

Today’s TDC says

Celebrate the season wherever you live (Autumn in the northern Hemisphere, Spring in the southern) by getting out in the streets today and photographing the beauty that is the moment.

If you’re housebound, turn your camera to the window. Compose your shot. Make it beautiful.

It’s  very changeable weather here today – one minute bule sky, the next drizzly rain. Here’s my favourite orner of our garden, with Fair Flora (needing repainting!) in front of our ‘orchard corner’. The wee apple tree still has apples on it and the cherry is a lovely colour. The huge fuchsia is called ‘Delta’s Sarah’

283/365 Fair Flora in the autumn garden
283/365 Fair Flora in the autumn garden flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license