In his statement John Swinney announced:an extra £17 million for colleges to maintain student numbers and support (in financial year April 2013- March 2014 and underlining is my emphasis)
This is effectively putting back into the budgets of the Colleges money he had previously announced would be cut from their budgets next year. This additional cash means that places will be frozen at this year's level. It should mean that that there won't be any further reductions in places available next year.
Earlier this week, I had identified a big difference between the rising number of applicants for further education courses at Dundee College against recruitment targets that had been limited by reductions to the College's budget for this financial year.
A spokesperson for Dundee College has confirmed:
'that currently we have 523 applicants who are fully qualified that we have had to put on a a waiting list. We also have 342 applications on the waiting list but these are people who have conditions to be met.'
I note that many offers of places to undertake a course at College will be conditional on achieving entrance standards such as achieving passes in examinations at school.
These figures, released by the College, show that there are already 865 applicants waiting for a place at Dundee College. Of these 523 are good to go but there is no place to start now. Just over a third are applicants who are working towards meeting the entrance requirements of their course.
When our pupils leave school in June 2013, those that want to extend their qualifications at Dundee College will likely find that they are in competition for a place with applicants who are already on the waiting list from this year.
I hope that John Swinney can be persuaded to increase further the budgets of the FE Colleges beyond the £17 million already on the table. This would be fair to the applicants marking time on the waiting list.
