College cuts would decimate opportunities for young people in Angus and have just as damaging consequences for Arbroath, it has been claimed.
The warning was issued by social sciences course leader Cherry Hopton during a mass protest by Angus College students at the Arbroath institution on Tuesday.
She said: ”Angus College is the biggest employer in Arbroath if you lose Angus College, Arbroath becomes a very different town.
”If you want to know what sort of town that is, go to the old mining communities where all the employment has been sucked out and you have got a desolate wasteland.
”So everybody in Arbroath should be on our side on this.”
Students stood in front of the Isla Building holding a number to represent the potential full-time places lost to the college due to government funding cuts.
The college sector will shoulder the weight as it swallows £74 million of cuts over three years and principal John Burt is predicting 400 full-time places and 1,200 part-time places would go.
Cherry added: ”Students who use further education tend to be students who haven’t had a good time at school it’s second chance education.
”I think if you lose places from FE, in the end it is going to cost you far more. If you give these students opportunities they can be anything if you take them away you’ve got a problem.
”The reality is if the draft budget is an indication of how much money is going to come into the FE sector then we are in trouble.
”Until you reform the structures and the methods of governance, what will happen is the easy stuff will get cut, which is courses and student numbers.”
Graeme Kirkpatrick, depute president of the National Union of Students Scotland, said Angus College being forced to cut places would be a disaster.
He said: ”We know the devastating damage last year’s cuts had on quality, teaching time, and on wider support and guidance to students.
”These cuts have had a real impact on the lives of those studying at college and I don’t know if students will be able to take any further hit on the frontline services and opportunities that colleges provide.
”The SNP don’t seem to have quite understood that colleges aren’t just about producing widgets for employers they are about communities. If you take Angus College out of this community, that is going to have an extremely damaging effect.
”I think it’s time colleges were recognised for the way they serve communities and what they put back into communities. We are in a recession and surely the way out of a recession is to invest in education and I think that would be the sensible thing to do.”
Arbroath students Cara MacKenzie, Katie Mew and Tatiana Zorina said cutting college places means cutting the opportunity of education and training for so many people.
Cara said: ”I didn’t do very well at school but I got a second chance at college and now I’ve got good qualifications behind me.”
Katie said: ”It’s a second chance for people that didn’t get on well at school if we no longer have that it will take away the opportunities for social mobility.”
Tatiana said: ”This will affect the skilled workforce of Angus. A college education is as vital to the economy as a university education and we need the same level of support and recognition.”
Councillors David May and Margaret Thomson joined students at the protest and urged Alex Salmond to look again.
Councillor May said: ”Margaret is presently a teacher and I was a head teacher and we’re aware that we in schools cannot provide these youngsters with the skills they need to get jobs we can provide them with the academic qualifications but we cannot provide them with the skills that only colleges can provide them with.”