Achi news desk-
I ended up staying for nine years.
Why? Because I went to learn to help people, and – pound for pound – colleges do that better than any other institution in the country.
Colleges are full of people who need help, and full of people who want to help them.
READ MORE
Colleges facing a budget gap of almost half a billion pounds
Dive deep: explore the key statistics for Scotland’s college sector
I left school with nothing but college has changed my life
They offer alternative routes for people who have become lost in the system. They give a second chance to people who have been let down, or let themselves down, in the past. They are an example for people whose lives have been damaged by all kinds of trauma.
And they do all that without ever receiving the recognition, respect, or funding they deserve.
Teaching in the further education sector, I realized that the people who run Scotland don’t seem to care about it, no matter what claims they make in public. I have said before, more than once, that for this particular group of people, colleges are for other people’s children.
Over and over, I have seen colleges ignored at best and dismissed at worst while Scottish politicians talk about education and equality as top priorities.
Time and time again, I saw college students – my students – treated not even as second best, but as the least important people in an eternal queue.
And over all that time, the state of Scotland’s colleges steadily declined.
The sector has faced a decade of industrial disputes which, like so many problems, are rooted in a failure to provide the funding they need. Every time I see a government minister or SNP MLA insist that they really value colleges, I think of that line that President Biden is so fond of: don’t tell me what you value it – show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.
But it’s not just the government – almost a decade of teaching in colleges has led me to the conclusion that Scotland as a whole does not value colleges properly. This is often because people don’t really understand what they do, how they work and who they serve, and because the incredible diversity of the sector makes it impossible to tell a simple story about why it all matters.
But it matters.
Colleges are important to Scotland. They are essential to our current and future prosperity, and the only way we can get anywhere near net zero targets. They generate billions for the economy.
Above all: they change lives.
On a personal level, colleges are obviously very important to me. It was a privilege to learn in one for so long, and now I consider myself lucky to be able to help tell their story.
