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Introduction
It is difficult to overstate the importance of Scotland's colleges to the hundreds of thousands of learners they serve each year and to the contribution they make to Scotland's economic and social well-being.
Colleges literally help transform lives. By helping learners acquire and develop skills, and through their work in fostering knowledge exchange, colleges have a crucial role in delivering the Scottish Government's central purpose to focus public services on creating a more successful country, delivering wider social, cultural and economic benifits for all of Scotland's people.
Scotland requires an effective and efficient college sector where each college strives to perform to the highest levels to maximise the undoubted positive difference they make to the lives of learners and potential learners and to our economy and society. Effective colleges have a greater beneficial impact on learners. So too do efficient ones because they enable more learners to benefit from the greater number of opportunities they can offer. Colleges are therefore rightly held to account to ensure that public receives best value for their investment.
Skills and knowledge coupled with positive attitudes and behaviours are key to unlocking opportunity. Learners attend college because they want to better their life in some way. They want to acquire skills either because those skills realise employment opportunities for them or because the skills themselves enhance the quality of their lives and those around them.
The difference that colleges make is founded on the diversity of the learners they serve and the range of learning opportunities that they provide.
Colleges cater for the needs of learners both in and out of employment at all stages in their lives from middle secondary school and earlier to retirement. They offer learning for life and learning throughout life. They provide opportunities at almost every level of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework ( SCQF), serving learners with the most basic educational needs, as well as providing courses up to and including higher education.
Colleges' curriculum spans much of the range of learning needs, from specialised vocational education and training (such as construction, hairdressing, engineering, information technology, hospitality, and health and social care) through to general educational programmes. The level of provision ranges from essential life skills and provision for students with learning difficulties through to higher national certificates ( HNCs) and higher national diplomas ( HNDs). In addition to delivering Higher National Courses, some colleges, including the colleges in the Highland and Islands that provide courses on behalf of UHI Millennium Institute, also deliver degrees and post-graduate qualifications. No other sector matches the range of courses that colleges deliver.
Basic employability and technical skills are central to the benefits learners derive from college, but they are far from being the only benefits. Other benefits can include enabling people to participate actively in society.
Colleges serve the needs of a wide range of learners with a diverse spectrum of needs and aspirations. College may be part of a learner's school-based curriculum. Learners could also be attending to acquire qualifications for work or for university entry. They could be obtaining the skills necessary to become self-employed. They could be in a job and be going to college to learn skills necessary to progress their career. They could be retraining as a result of a period of ill health or disability. They could be taking steps to regain control over their lives and build their confidence. They could be learning to speak English. They could be acquiring and developing skills to support volunteering and local community activities. They could be attending a course for personal development or purely for recreation and well-being.
There have been a number of important steps taken in recent years to widen participation that have enabled more people from all parts of society to access both further and higher education. In colleges, high proporations of learners from the most deprived areas, learners with disabilities and learners from ethnic minority backgrounds are participating at all levels.
Given that disabled people are more than twice as likely as non-disabled people to have no qualifications, and over a third of working-age disabled adults live in income poverty, 1 the contribution of colleges is vital in terms of personal potential and employability. Attendance at college can also be particularly beneficial for those who may not necessarily seek a qualification, such as those wishing to develop independent living skills.
Scotland needs more college places. The lives of many more people in Scotland could be transformed if they were given the right encouragement, opportunity and support to go to college.
Scotland's colleges can help deliver the Scottish Government's strategic priorities across the range of Executive responsibilities.
By providing high quality learning opportunities and by collaborating with businesses and other learning providers to foster knowledge exchange, Scotland's colleges make a key contribution to economic growth - the Executive's overarching priority. The opportunities they provide help tackle poverty and disadvantage. Their pivotal role in realising lifelong learning places them at the heart of our society. Through activities such as the promotion of Gaelic and support to creative industries, including the performing arts, colleges also enrich the cultural fabric of the nation. For all these reasons it makes intuitive sense to invest in them. However, more than that, we know we also receive an excellent economic return on our investment - on a very conservative analysis at least £3.20 is generated for the economy for every pound invested 2.
Colleges can help make Scotland smarter, wealthier and fairer.
Colleges' work, which includes supporting rural development, community regeneration and exploiting new business opportunities arising from the pursuit of sustainable development, can help make Scotland safer and stronger and greener.
As well as helping to developing Scotland's care and health sector workforce, they also provide opportunities for learners to become active members of their communities, helping them lead a more sustainable lifestyle, and improve their own health and well-being. Colleges can help make Scotland healthier.
The contribution that colleges make is often enhanced by working together with a range of partners across the education and training community, including employers and the voluntary sector. The success or otherwise of college partnerships can be key to the difference that they make.
All of Scotland's colleges have developed partnerships with learners and with organisations such as the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Careers Scotland and awarding bodies like the Scottish Qualifications Authority and City and Guilds.
Colleges also work closely with organisations represented on community learning and development partnerships such as local authority, Community Learning and Development services, voluntary and community organisations, police, health and social services. Their role in the community, working in partnership with other agencies, helps to promote social inclusion and encourages community activities. They can be an important community resource. Colleges also work with other partner agencies to provide support for learning, for example, Skill Scotland, and local counselling and support services.
In addition, colleges work closely together. For example, the Colleges Open Learning Exchange Group ( COLEG) was established in January 1995 to develop learning opportunities through member colleges working together to generate, exchange and promote the use of high quality flexible learning materials. All of Scotland's colleges are also working with the Scottish Qualifications Authority to modernise Higher National qualifications in an unique partnership model of national curriculum change.
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