There are not many numbers I could quote from distant days in government but one has stuck in my mind because I was quite proud of it: £41 million. The reasons remain highly relevant.

Having become Scottish education minister prior to devolution, I made an early decision, to the horror of civil servants, that the further education sector would get every penny of increased support it was asking for: £41m, or almost double that in today’s money.

I had a pre-existing respect for the sector and deplored how it was treated. The money had to come from somewhere which meant a modest top-slice to universities. Even more horror. The principals harrumphed a little but I reckoned you could give them £41m and they would be back next day for more. To the colleges, it made a real difference.

It has been a long time since Scotland’s colleges got every penny they asked for or had their true worth valued. For all the lip service to “equality of esteem”, they have returned to being the poor relations of Scottish education while still relied on as the crucial provider of useful careers and second chances to hundreds of thousands of Scots.

For years, there has been an endless procession of cuts, forced mergers, redundancies and industrial disputes. The current one over pay has been dragging on since 2022 with no end in sight which is why lecturers will demonstrate again outside the Scottish Parliament today. Good luck to them. Basically, it is less about money than relative values.

In the midst of industrial action, the Scottish Government budget removed £26m which had been allocated to the sector and the latest response has........

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