4.4 Views on impact of merger on own organisations(question 4)

• Themes emerging with regards to a positive impact include: financial sustainability and efficiencies; benefits for staff; benefits for students; benefits for the community; benefits for the region; stakeholder relationships; and reputation.
• Points were also raised around a potential negative impact and some suggestions were provided.

4.5 Views on proposed name (question 5)

• The name was liked by some and not by others. Some suggested other names for consideration.

5. Analysis

There were 5 questions in the consultation document which related to the proposal to merge Lews Castle College (UHI Outer Hebrides) and North Highland College (UHI North Highland). One question was closed (question 3) and also included an open response where respondents were asked to give a reason for their answer.

The following analysis follows the layout of the consultation document.

5.1 Question 1

What are your views on the college merger proposal?

The following themes emerged from those who were supportive of the proposed merger: financial sustainability and resilience; course choice; benefits for students; benefits for rural areas; benefits for the new college; stakeholder relationships; and innovation.

A summary of the comments in each theme is presented below.

Financial sustainability and resilience

• Efficient way to save money and generate income
• It is essential / offers financial security
• Long-term sustainability of the 3 colleges
• Economies of scale / drive efficiencies / pool resources
• Help in challenging economic times
• Greater resilience
• Opportunity to strengthen resources
• Benefit from being part of UHI family
• 3 colleges no longer competing for funding

Course choice

• Grow curriculum / increase course viability
• Breadth of curriculum opportunities
• Broader range of courses / increased curriculum opportunities
• Opportunity to strengthen services
• Important to ensure accessible, diverse and relevant curriculum offer at a local level

Benefits for students

• Bigger choice for students
• Improve student experience / enhanced student experience

Benefits for rural areas

• Keep education in rural areas
• Improve employability / employment in local areas
• Retain all ages in rural areas
• Access to remote learning
• Profile across Scotland
• Opportunity for growth in the region
• Growing education, research, innovation and knowledge exchange
• Potential opportunities for the region
• Transformative
• Continuation of some local provision
• Align with employers and sustainable jobs

Benefits for the new college

• Agile organisation that responds to student and labour market needs
• Colleges complement one another
• Sustained provision of professional jobs
• An exciting opportunity

Stakeholder relationships

• Opportunity to learn from each other’s experience
• Improve working relationships
• Collaboration
• Partnership and stakeholders working together
• Supported by stakeholders
• Deeper and wider collaboration around delivery of work-based learning
• Shared capacity
• Employer engagement / strengthen partnership working with local employers

Innovation

• Encourages innovation
• Blueprint to learn from

The following themes emerged from those who were against the proposed merger: a financial decision; concern around individual colleges; challenges of / for rural areas; and communications. Further detail is provided below.

A financial decision

• Cost-saving measure
• Seems strange when considering shared delivery
• Concern around a centralisation of funds

Concern around individual colleges

• Not a good idea
• Should not lead to closure of establishments
• Negative impact due to unique position of colleges to serve their individual locations and communities
• Not a proactive approach to provide targeted educational services to the local community
• Worried that it will worsen situation
• Avoid centralisation
• Staffing changes to be managed sensitively
• Preserve unique identities / histories of 3 colleges
• “Vanilla flavour” of education, fitting into traditional academic mould
• Concern around duplication of tasks
• Concern around reduction in staff numbers
• Concern around loss of experience, skills and knowledge in restructuring

Challenges of / for rural areas

• Challenges of colleges dispersed across rural areas
• Concern that island communities will lose out
• Importance of different local economies and different skills needs
• More coherent planning

Communications

• Need clear and honest communications

Some additional points that respondents highlighted include:

• Charity trustees to act with care and diligence in the interest of the charity
• Transfer of liabilities to North Highland College may be difficult to absorb
• Financial interest of the charity
• Commitment to no compulsory redundancies
• Principle at core of merger should be “education for education’s sake” / education to contribute to local community
• Clear remit required
• Importance of transparency, accountability and decision making
• Face to face learning and teaching to be a priority
• Ensure inclusive learning and teaching, e.g. for vulnerable or hard to reach students, students with additional support needs or disabilities

5.2 Question 2

How do you view the impact of the merger on further and higher education provision and delivery in the Highlands and Islands region?

Views were expressed of a positive and negative impact, while some noted that they do not know how the merger will impact on delivery in the Highlands and Islands.

Those citing a positive impact of the merger on further and higher education provision and delivery in the Highlands and Islands noted: improving courses / wider curriculum offer; benefits for students; benefits for staff; efficiencies and financial sustainability; benefits for the Highlands; green skills; Gaelic education / Gaelic community; and provided some recommendations going forward.

Further themes within this are as follows.

Improving courses / wider curriculum offer

• Improve course / curriculum relevance
• Improve course / curriculum quality
• Improves services and courses offered
• Broader curriculum offer / increase course offer / wider curriculum choice
• More sustainable curriculum offer
• More opportunities for FE courses
• More digital delivery
• High quality hybrid learning models
• Online and blended delivery programmes

Benefits for students

• Meet needs of students and employers
• Strengthen student support teams
• Strengthen student experience
• Attract students / wider access to students
• Access to courses / enhanced delivery of courses
• High quality courses / greater research-led teaching
• Potentially create stronger pathways / create seamless post-school pathways to sustainable employment
• Improve graduate employment outcomes
• Opportunity to provide all-age qualifications / upskilling

Benefits for staff

• Increased personal and professional development opportunities
• Could expand the staff course Gaelic for Work Purposes
• Sharing of best practice and expertise

Efficiencies and financial sustainability

• Remove silos and duplication across the three colleges
• Avoids colleges going bankrupt / ensures financial viability
• Focus collective efforts to meet economic need
• More agile response to changing demand
• Avoids duplication
• May make some FE courses more sustainable by pooling resources
• More streamlined structure
• Effective pool of resources
• Positive impact on delivery of FE and HE in the Highlands and Islands
• Opportunity to combine student numbers
• Improve delivery / improved provision and delivery / sustainability for the three merged colleges
• Encourages partnership working - e.g. with UHI, SFC and SDS
• Benefits of integration across the wider UHI Partnership

Benefits for the Highlands

• Address demographic challenges / reverse depopulation trends, particularly among young people / avoids losing young population / increase number of people and young people choosing to live and work in region
• Boost Highland economy / supports and grows businesses and communities / greater opportunity to upskill workforce for relevant industries / opportunity to align with key and emerging sectors
• Innovation
• Highlights the importance of academia, education and skills as priority areas for growth
• Modern University for the whole region

Green skills

• Support green skills
• College of choice for renewables training
• Greater opportunity to respond to regional and national priorities such as net zero

Gaelic education / Gaelic community

• Merged college will support the development of Gaelic teacher education
• Community benefits – retainment of local identities and drive forward the revitalisation of Gaelic
• Access to Immersion in Gaelic, with school/college partnerships playing an important role in areas such as Health & Social Care, Childcare and Creative Digital Media.

Recommendations around the Gaelic language

• Build capacity to deliver such a range of subjects in the medium of Gaelic, in particular to support schools. This could include using college staff to deliver Senior Phase courses in either face-to-face or online settings.
• Undertake Islands Communities Impact Assessment which includes the impacts on the Gaelic language.

Other recommendations

• Ensure number of jobs is sufficient
• Ensure decent and secure terms and conditions for jobs
• Strengthen supportive and collaborative bonds across networks
• Seek commitment that Scottish Distant Islands Allowance is protected and continued in new college

The following themes emerged from those who felt there would be a negative impact on further and higher education provision and delivery in the Highlands and Islands region: bureaucracy; online delivery; reputation; and employers’ / training needs. Further detail is provided below.

Bureaucracy

• Additional bureaucracy / management layer

Online delivery

• Reduced face-to-face provision for FE
• Risk that too many courses will be delivered online

Reputation

• Reputation of college – not seen as a serious college

Employers’ / training needs

• Reduces colleges’ connection with local industry and their training needs

Other

• Won’t improve situation
• It will make things worse
• Make things more complicated
• Reduce access for students in rural areas

Some respondents highlighted caveats that they felt were important to note, including:

• Need to increase number of students for positive benefits to be realised
• Should maintain skills to provide a local service / meet local needs
• Curriculum should be responsive to upcoming local developments – for example, Scotwind Offshore Wind Lease Sites, Pentland Floating Offshore Wind Farm, West of Orkney Wind Farm, Sutherland Spaceport.
• Needs investment in capability and capacity for local developments
• Merged college to meet development needs in the North Highlands
• Should learn from negative experience of previous mergers such as the North Atlantic Fisheries College

5.3 Question 3

To what extent do you agree with the rationale for merger as set out by the Board of Management of the three colleges?

Question 3 was a closed question asking the extent to which respondents agreed with the rationale for the merger as set out for the Board. Options provided were strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree. Results are provided in table 1.

Table 1: extent to which respondents agree with the rationale for the merger

Answer	Number of respondents
Strongly Agree	9
Agree	5
Disagree	2
Strongly Disagree	3
Not answered / no view expressed	3

Notes: total number of respondents = 22*

*Includes view of Kate Forbes MSP

Respondents were then asked to give a reason for their answer.

Themes for those agreeing include: more / better courses; financial sustainability and effectiveness; stakeholder relationships; Highland communities; benefits for students; and comment on the rationale. Further detail for each theme is provided below.

More / better courses

• To offer more courses and more reliable courses
• Merger provides a wider educational offer
• Courses deliverable at scale
• Expands provision
• Opportunity to access wider skills, training and facilities
• Currently overlapping and competing curriculums

Financial sustainability and effectiveness

• To save money
• Long-term viability / sustainability / survival of colleges / creates a more robust organisation
• Long-term effectiveness
• Provide greater opportunity for growth
• Support improved governance and financial sustainability
• Combined capacity to do more
• Individual colleges facing financial challenges
• Financial challenges best addressed by a merger / driven by real-term funding cuts
• Streamlined background services allows more focus on frontline delivery
• Affordable courses
• Allows colleges to develop and adapt

Stakeholder relationships

• Add strength and balance to UHI Partnership
• Stakeholder momentum and support throughout the process

Highland communities

• Opportunities for Highland communities / captures opportunities as well as mitigating challenges
• Opportunity to tie in with other initiatives – e.g. ScotWind, the Cromarty Freeport and the Island Deals
• Focus on key areas of need / meets rapidly evolving needs, e.g. net zero
• Sense of place
• Driven by small declining youth population
• Current lack of capacity to respond to regional opportunities

Benefits for students

• Ensure quality of student experience

Comment on the rationale

• Rationale based on experience
• Sound rationale
• Logical
• Rationale justified and reasonable
• Rationale addresses risk faced by the 3 colleges
• Rationale is aspirational
• Model has scope for change across partnership
• Supports remain local rationale

The following themes emerged for those disagreeing with the rationale for the merger.

• Colleges out of touch with local demands
• Centralised management as a bad idea
• Disappointing that merger is needed for villages to survive
• UHI leadership is empire building
• Concerned about the financial rationale used to explain the merger proposal
• Hollowing out of 3 colleges to make merger more palatable
• Concern about need to show college is making money rather than addressing local need
• Concern about competition with other UHI colleges for funding

One other comment was that the new merged college may continue to face financial challenges.

5.4 Question 4

What impact, if any, will the merger have on your own organisation, and your service users, staff and potential employees?

Those responding to question 4, which asked about the impact that the merger will have on their own organisation, service users, staff and potential employees, cited both positive and negative impacts. Some also said that they could not tell what the impact will be, or it is not known.

Themes emerging with regards to a positive impact include: financial sustainability and efficiencies; benefits for staff; benefits for students; benefits for the community; benefits for the region; stakeholder relationships; and reputation. Further detail is as follows.

Financial sustainability and efficiencies

• Avoids duplication
• Financial sustainability and economies of scale
• Brings 3 local teams into one team

Benefits for staff

• Frees up staff time to deliver
• Avoids competition
• Increased resilience for staff and the organisation
• Opportunities for staff / more career opportunities for staff
• Staff engaged in workstreams and sense need for change
• Will offer employment in a sustainable, innovative institution
• Offer well-paid employment in rural Scotland
• Opportunity to spread pressures on current small teams
• Attract highly qualified staff
• Share expertise
• Attractive place for staff and their families
• Opportunity for collaborative working
• Development and sharing of specialisms

Benefits for students

• Increased and sustainable provision for students
• More courses in rural areas
• Growth in student numbers in growth sectors

Benefits for the community

• A strong employer in fragile economic areas
• Improved capacity for development
• Community investment
• Community partnership

Benefits for region

• Potential opportunities for the region
• Partnership working
• Industry / employer engagement
• Quick response to local needs
• Attract and train workforce / attract people to region
• Training, research and innovation benefits
• Expand Apprenticeship provision / maximise work-based learning offer / build larger cohorts of Apprenticeships
• More agile support for upskilling and reskilling

Stakeholder relationships

• Strengthen stakeholder relationships
• Local engagement
• Collaborative working
• Develop areas of good practice
• Regular and effective communication and engagement
• Partnership working to raise awareness

Reputation

• Enhance reputation

Where a negative impact was foreseen, the following points were noted:

• Complicates delivery, assessment and communications
• Reduced local presence
• Reduced understanding of localised training needs

It was also noted that impact will be measured by the effectiveness of college partnerships with others.

Some suggestions were provided which include:

• Need for the merged college to pay particular attention to population and talent attraction, finances and sustainability and college status such as being incorporated or unincorporated to ensure the necessary levels of flexibility are in place to secure external funds.
• Need for local advisory boards
• Request for sustainable permanent hours / no reduction in teaching hours
• Request for the best possible voluntary redundancy package
• Request for adequate investment in lecturing staff
• Request that best practice is prioritised
• Request that good industrial relations and negotiations continue

5.5 Question 5

Do you have any views on the proposed new name of the merged college?

The final question in the consultation asked respondents whether they had any views on the proposed name of the merged college.

Those who liked the name noted that:

• Name is functional
• Name shows it is a joint college
• Name reflects location of new college
• Fair reflection of the parties involved
• Retains former identities
• Local identity and part of wider brand important
• Allows reference to three colleges as a single entity at regional and national level
• Content with new name

Those who did not like the name noted that:

• Name is lacking imagination and ambition / unimaginative
• Name is too long / prefer a simpler name
• Name is not future-proof / not future proof – possible future mergers
• Name is inaccurate
• Outer Hebrides should be in English version of name
• Confusing name / poor branding
• New combined colleges’ identify could diminish rather than re-enforce the developing local economic brand
• Will be shortened to UHI NWH which is unpronounceable and meaningless
• Not particularly exciting or prestigious

Other points of note include:

• Logos and other visual identities of a merged College to, at least, be bilingual and thus include Gaelic, giving equal prominence to the language
• Name should not be similar to original colleges names
• Could be known by acronym as name is long
• Spoken name suggests focus on North West and the Hebrides
• College is a charity that requires OSCR’s consent to change name
• Name should align with UHI brand
• Name is important for a sense of place and ownership

Suggested names included:

• Highlands College or Highlands & Hebrides College
• UHI West, North and Hebrides