College Funding

That the Parliament warmly congratulates Scotland’s colleges in terms of the outstanding contribution that they have made to improving educational opportunities for a wide range of learners, improving the alignment between available skills and local employment opportunities and in embracing the need for structural reform; condemns the Scottish Government for forcing on the sector deeply damaging financial cuts for the period 2012-15, which are disproportionately greater in 2012-13, and which will inevitably have a detrimental impact on staffing, student places and support for students from more disadvantaged backgrounds; fails to understand how these financial cuts can be reconciled with the Scottish Government’s flagship 16 to 19 policy and the need to address the very worrying youth unemployment statistics that have revealed that 88,000 young people aged 18 to 24 are now out of work, and calls on the Scottish Government to urgently reconsider the proposed budget settlement for the further education sector.