December 2024 Principal's Blog: Curriculum
The academic year is well underway, and staff and students have returned from their October break. At this time of year, we have embarked on the process of review of our longer courses to determine delivery for next academic year (from August 2025). As well as assessing the health of courses this also involves considering demand from students and the needs of industry.
A key part of this work is discussions with the school service on delivery of our Skills for Work and Senior Phase programmes to ensure the widest possible opportunities are available for our young people. Such curriculum review has improved our delivery in this category, with a subsequent increase in demand. Numbers in Senior Phase have risen from 11 to 77 since 22/23 (from 61 to 124 including school-based Highers courses).
New for this year is our Skills for Work Energy course developed in response to the growing industry requirement for skills in this area. We have also seen the introduction of the Access to Nursing, Social Care and Allied Health Professionals senior phase programme. For a sector where there is a huge demand for employees, this course has been developed in partnership with Shetland Islands Council and provides an introduction to the professions, includes work experience and an SVQ2. Successful students are qualified to work in the sector facilitating engagement in paid social care work after leaving school, either during breaks from other study or as casual work.
This year we are also offering a new one-year National Certificate course in Shipping and Maritime Operations which is suitable for anyone considering a career in the fish catching, the Merchant Navy or wider maritime industries. This was developed in response to a growing need for an access route into what is a very important sector locally for Shetland and globally.
Our Higher Education curriculum, including HNCs through to Post Graduate qualifications, is overseen by UHI who hold overall responsibility for the curriculum at this level. We work collectively with our partners across the network to consider both local and regional requirements, to add wider expertise and input to our curriculum, and to offer a broad curriculum meeting the needs of communities and industry with effective progression routes through our partnership. As a result of our work this year we will be introducing modules in Sustainable Marine Management, Aquaculture and Fisheries.
We provide short courses throughout the year based upon demand. Recently we have been evolving our offer to meet the changing requirements for employees within the care sector along with the aquaculture industry, particularly those operating workboats. We have also upgraded our simulator to facilitate additional bespoke provision and reinstated our first aid course offer.
Whatever we deliver requires funding, for our Further Education (FE) delivery this is driven by the allocation of credits through the Regional Strategic Body from the Scottish Funding Council. The business case for the merger of the three Shetland based organisations stated that the merged college would deliver around 5000 credits by academic year 2025/26. Following through on our plans our FE credit delivery has grown from 4359 to 4778 over the last two years. Sadly, our credit allocation has not grown to match our delivery (indeed has been reduced to 3902) and despite putting in place mitigations to manage credit claims over the last two years we have delivered over our credit target and in the last two years this has been some 22.5% over target. This may seem like a good thing but unfortunately it means that we are not being funded for the portion we deliver over our reduced target.
To address this, we have moved most of our short courses to a full cost recovery model, reduced our credit claim for full time students and apprentices, reviewed and consolidated our course offer, and sought alternative forms of funding for certain courses which would previously have been credit funded. This alternative funding is unfortunately finite, but it supports continued delivery whilst we seek a more permanent solution. We are also working with our UHI partners to find solutions to make courses more sustainable including shared delivery models and sharing of expertise and resources.
This credit funding situation is not confined to Shetland and is the same across our UHI island colleges and the wider Highlands and Islands. With the economic developments coming to our UHI regions it is essential that funding is available for the skills to underpin those economic opportunities, and we continue to lobby for the credit to support this endeavour.
This week we are holding a Business Breakfast at the Lerwick Campus and a Fishing Industry event at the Scalloway Campus. We look forward to discussing our provision with these important stakeholders.
If you are aware of any delivery that should be offered by the college or would like to work with us on our provision please get in touch on study.shetland@shetland.gov.uk