Responses to the SFC Rural and remoteness funding review consultation (SFC/CN/01/2017)

Organisation (if applicable): and Angus College 1. Outcome agreement funding requires Yes urban and rural colleges to ensure adequate provision is available locally. Do you agree that some colleges need additional funding to support delivery across rural areas? 2. Do you agree with the basis on which No we propose to decide which regions will qualify for rural funding?

3. Do you agree with our assessment of Yes the issues that lead to the need for additional funding for colleges serving rural areas? (Small colleges, small classes, multi-campus operations, and staff travel).

Responses to the SFC Rural and remoteness funding review consultation (SFC/CN/01/2017) 4. Are there additional circumstances that • Student travel is a very significant issue and is one of the key difficulties in meeting the needs for rural present funding challenges to rural students. Supporting and managing rural transport requirements for students is a major financial, colleges? operational and managerial cost for Dundee & Angus College. Rural areas such as Angus suffer disproportionately in respect of issues including availability and effectiveness of public transport routes and infrastructure. This results in more complex, time consuming, and expensive journeys in comparison with urban areas. The “dispersed rural town” nature of Angus also makes this more complex than may be the case with other rural areas that fit within the “hub and spoke” model of city/large town surrounded by smaller settlements.

• Rural areas such as Angus suffer from lower job density and a proliferation of small scale employers. This impacts disproportionately on commercial income generation opportunities (GVA in Angus is 15% lower than Scotland as a whole) and creates additional pressures and costs in providing student work placements and in meeting work placement targets.

• This rural employment challenge has led the College and Angus Council to fund and support a shared apprenticeship model to provide access to construction apprenticeships that would not otherwise be possible.

• Rural deprivation is a significant issue impacting on learners, but is not recognised fully through other SIMD measures due to low population density - eg average earnings are significantly lower in rural areas like Angus compared with Scotland as a whole, whilst the claimant count for Angus is higher than Scottish average.

5. Where a college / region receives rural • Maintenance and success of rural/remote provision, including day-one successful student outcome funding, what should SFC expect to see measure based by proportion of rural/remote enrolments. delivered through the outcome agreement process?

Responses to the SFC Rural and remoteness funding review consultation (SFC/CN/01/2017) 6. How should we determine future levels • (and former Angus College before that) believes strongly that the Urban/Rural Classification of rurality funding for colleges receiving index used by SFC does not appropriately or adequately address the rurality issues faced by areas that are characterised by dispersed small rural towns - rather than the hub and spoke model of larger city/town surrounded by smaller rural additional funding for rurality? settlements. • The College believes strongly that the Urban/Rural Classification system is not the most appropriate measure and would refer SFC to the Accessibility measure underpinning SIMD data. This accessibility ranking includes drive times to facilities such as GP, PO, retail, fuel and (importantly) education. • The College believes that the exclusion of Angus as a rural area within the most recent proposals is an arbitrary and unacceptable outcome that reflects the inadequacies of the measurement used, rather than the significant accessibility issues that learners within Angus face. • To put this into context, Angus has 46 datazones out of 155 (30%) in the 20% most deprived areas for access in Scotland. Datazone “Angus Glens 01” is ranked 13th out of 7,000 datazones for access deprivation (worst 0.2%) with Angus Glens 02, 03, 04, (Letham and Glamis, Kirriemuir Landward and Friockheim) in the top 80 out of 7000 (in the worst 1% for access deprivation in Scotland). • It is only the proximity to Forfar, Montrose and Brechin (settlement populations of c. 10k) that results in a significant group of Angus learners not falling into the Remote Rural or Remote Small Town designation. These areas fall outwith scope in terms of rurality meaning that under the SFCs criteria for funding they are not considered to be rural or remote learners despite the accessibility issues that they face. • Given that almost all of D&A provision is made in either or Dundee, using the 8-fold Urban/Rural classification based on the proximity to settlements with population over 10,000 is arbitrary and unfair. In the context of D&A College education where the provision is made a significant distance away from the nearest settlements with over 10,000 people, this measure is not relevant to the actual experience or lives of our learners. • To further base funding criteria on the population of people living within the Urban/Rural classifications specified is arbitrary as it does not reflect the number or proportion of working age and young people at school or in education within these areas. • In 16/17, while only 1.5% of the population of Angus are considered to be in the areas considered as rural/remote criteria for SFC, around 1200 enrolments come from students who marginally miss out on that classification (6.5% of D&A enrolments and a significantly higher proportion of those in our Arbroath campus). This figure increases significantly if the appropriate accessibility measure is used.

Responses to the SFC Rural and remoteness funding review consultation (SFC/CN/01/2017) 7. Do the proposals have any positive or • Yes, the impacts of rural isolation and lack of access tend to disproportionately affect learners with negative impacts on those with a disabilities, particularly those with mobility support needs. protected characteristic, those from a care • At the current time c.19% of disabled enrolments in Arbroath campuses come from the most access experienced background and/or those deprived areas (with 35% of these learners having two or more impairments). This is significantly from the most deprived communities? If higher than the overall rate for the College as a whole and the proposed removal of rural/remote so, please explain to which groups and funding is likely to impact more significantly on these learners. why. General comments • Dundee and Angus College is very concerned at the proposals outlined within the consultation and the proposed exclusion of Angus learners from eligibility as rural/remote learners. The proposals as they currently stand will result in the loss of a significant funding stream from the College with significant consequences for outreach and learning provision within the Angus area. • Dundee and Angus College is concerned that the proposals directly contradict the verbal and written assurances provided to the Boards of Management of both legacy colleges by the and Scottish Government as a precondition of merger. The College feels that abandoning these clear assurances is likely to significantly damage future trust between these parties.