Almost £1 million in funding will be clawed back from Scottish colleges, it was announced this week.
Yes, you read that right. The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) isn’t granting cash-strapped colleges more funding, but rather taking away huge amounts of cash that it has already given them (which, incidentally, some colleges have already spent).
Why is this happening? Well, it is all about staff numbers at colleges. This year, colleges were allocated specific amounts from a £34.2 million funding pot to help to deal with the additional costs that have come with pay harmonisation.
But as Tes exclusively reported at the time, a revision of staffing data had brought to light the over-allocation of funding at certain colleges.
This week, the SFC announced that it will indeed “adjust in-year [academic year] 2018-19 by recovering 50 per cent of the over-allocation, which amounts to £907,942”. This money will be used to pay an additional £595,519 to those college regions that did not receive sufficient funds to meet their costs. The remaining over-allocation will then be clawed back next academic year. According to data published by the SFC this week, three colleges in the Glasgow region will have to pay back £180,222 this year, with a further £180,00 taken off its teaching grant in 2019-20. The Lanarkshire college region, will have to pay £215,000 back this year, and will see a further £215,000 deducted from its teaching grant next year.
Principals have told Tes of the implications of having to pay back funds that they had already allocated. “We don’t have those funds hanging around so we wouldn’t be able to pay that,” one said. “We, in good faith, gave [Colleges Scotland Employers’ Association] our contract data and assumed the calculations were done on what we gave them and what was agreed.”
Another college leader said: “When the award was made, there was no fine print that it would be reviewed so colleges have included it within their budget planning. To clawback mid-year, when colleges are under considerable economic pressure, would be really unhelpful.”
Unhelpful… hmm. We can think of a few more choice words to describe this.
