City of Glasgow college strike: Warning over ASN staff cuts

Staff say plans are in place to spend less time with students to encourage "independent learning", while they feel learners will benefit from teaching time.

That's especially true in the case of those with additional support needs, an issue highlighted on a picket line outside the college on Friday.

Laura Gallagher is a parent whose son, Taylor, has attended the college for the past two years but says he will now have to finish at CoGC because there is no support for him.

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She told The Herald: "Taylor has autism and he struggles quite a lot, he has additional needs on top of that and his daily struggles can be quite hard.

“School was a problem, high school was a problem then he came to college on a transitions course which he’s done for the last two years to get him ready for going to a placement.

“Without the learning support staff in this college he would not have lasted more than a couple of weeks, he would have gone in and been another number.

"In those two years he has thrived, he’s now socialising, he’s turned up today to support everyone else and he’s got his voice.

“It’s night and day. He really, really struggled all the way through school: he had no friendships, no socialisation. In these two years he’s now socialising, he has friends, he now goes outside, he comes to college on his own and interacts with people.

“He’s thriving and has turned into the most amazing young adult.

“We will back the lecturers 100 per cent, they’ve done an amazing job. The care, the compassion, everything they do – they’re invaluable.

“What they’ve done for my son: I cannot thank them enough.”

Staff were joined on the picket by people on transitions courses who have additional support needs which can include disability or health, learning environment, family circumstances and social and emotional factors.

Liam Quinn is a student with autism who has completed a course in computing and will graduate to a mainstream course next year.

From left, ASL support staff Jackie McMaster, former transition students now in mainstream courses Sophia Fulston and Liam Quinn, with support staff Cath Bonner (Image: Gordon Terris)

He said: "At first I was scared when I came to college, the lecturers calmed me down and helped me throughout my course.

“I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without my lecturers, they helped a lot. That’s why I’m supporting them today.”

His sentiments were echoed by other students who spoke to The Herald.

Sophia Fulston said: "I’m a student on the transitions course, which I enrolled in because I thought it would help me reintegrate back into education.

“It’s helped a lot, because I wasn’t diagnosed very early with autism and this was the first time being surrounded by other people with autism.

“To have peers who have had a lot of the same experiences as me has been a totally different experience and it’s helped me feel more comfortable and confident."

She is now going to take on a music course at Kelvin College and says her lecturers were "instrumental" in securing her place.

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Olivia Gibson is another who has been through the support programme, but she said a mainstream sociology course she was supposed to enroll in has been cancelled.

She said: "I’m autistic and my course is for autistic and neurodivergent people. It’s really helped me because I went to a mainstream school and going from that onto a course would have been too much.

“It’s helps you embrace your autism, it makes you feel normal and they don’t judge you. At school you had to mask it and act like people who don’t have autism.

“I don’t think I could have done a mainstream course without doing this one first.

“The lecturers are more chilled, they understand you a lot better and they understand what kind of help and support you’re going to need."

Staff on the picket line said additional support needs places were facing further strain after support staff numbers had already been cut from 10 to two.

Jacqueline George, a lecturer in supported programmes said: "We take young people who perhaps need a second chance, in supported programmes it’s a wide range of abilities.

“The majority of our young people are neurodiverse, we have a big contingent of people with autism and they need particular things.

“It’s not easy making the jump from school to college at any time, mainstream or if you have an additional support need, but when you’ve got autism and you’re an adolescent we’re asking you to cope with major change at a time in your life when you’re majorly changing.

"Cuts by stealth are creeping in. When we started a full-time programme was 24 hours per week for a young person, now that’s been reduced to 14.

“There’s quite a significant decline in quality there, and while we’re talking about the decline in the number of hours we have an increase in the number of students.

“We started with six in the class and it’s now up to 12. That doesn’t sound like a significant amount but each student needs that individually-tailored support and that makes it time-intensive.

"There used to be 10 student support lecturers, now there are two and they’re being phased out and replaced by a private organisation.

“You’ve got public money being spent on private companies and my experience is that the quality is absolutely gone from that process.

“I used to meet with a lecturer from learning support, we would discuss the needs of the student which I knew very well because I’d worked with them for two years.

“Now that doesn’t exist, so it’s a real problem for our students to progress. A lot of access courses are being cut, I have students who have already suffered from this."

Don MacKeen, who has been a lecturer on the transitions course for 20 years underlined the societal impact of people with additional support needs being lost to further education.

Don MacKeen, a lecturer at City of Glasgow College (Image: Gordon Terris)

He said: "You’re already dealing with marginalised people who have high rates of unemployment, so it’s pulling the rug out from under these students, the opportunity for them to become independent, to become productive members of society is really reduced.

“They’re talking about this in purely financial terms but if you think about it like that, what’s then the effect on society?

“These individuals have so much to offer, so many skills and talents and this unique way of looking at the world – losing that is a huge cost to society.”

Ms George agreed: "People talk a lot of bollocks about inclusion, but it’s not inclusive to be put in situations where you don’t have the proper support.

“I don’t know what our young people are going to do, especially working class young people.

“Colleges have always been good at providing a non-academic route: you want to be a plumber, a joiner, a baker, a candlestick maker, you can do it in practical settings in college.

“Now the starting point seems to be level 6 and it’s a purely academic route. That is absolutely ridiculous and it’s working class young people who are affected by that.”

Stuart Brown, National Officer for Further Education with EIS said: “Colleges are extremely important to their communities, and one of the most important things they do is cater for people who are perhaps left behind, have struggled at school or just didn’t get what they needed our of the school education system.

“A lot of that can be down to additional support needs and it’s extremely disappointing and, in fact, a bit callous that additional support needs appear to be targeted as an easy cut by college management.

"The message is simple: step back from the brink, listen to the branch. We want to talk, we want to consult fully, it does not have to be this way.

“Pause the process, get back around the negotiating table and talk to us seriously about alternatives to going over the cliff edge of redundancies.”

A City of Glasgow College spokesperson said: “All Scottish colleges face substantial funding and financial challenges from real-terms cuts, plus rising energy, inflation and staff costs.

"The claw back of £26 million that had been promised to the college sector in the recent Scottish Government budget exacerbates an already challenging financial landscape for the College.

"The college budget allocation is a flat cash settlement but with inflation running at 10%, this is a significant and unsustainable 10% real terms cut, which has unfortunately left us with no option other than bringing forward proposals for compulsory redundancies, which are subject to ongoing consultation.  

“The national EIS-FELA body has been demonstrating outside the Scottish Parliament and has called on the Scottish Government to fix the national crisis affecting colleges, so they recognise it is a national issue.

"It doesn’t make any sense to go out on local strikes on a national funding issue as it can’t change anything. Fortunately, 70% of our lecturers are putting students first by continuing to work, which is minimising the disruption to students, and the College remains open throughout the strike action.”