EIS FELA held their parliamentary reception on the evening of the Scottish Budget, the 13th of January 2026. MSPs, representatives from Colleges Scotland and EIS FELA members came together in a night of discussion around the future of funding in the sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event was co-hosted by representatives from all major parties in Scottish Parliament: Ross Greer of the Scottish Greens; Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats; Miles Briggs of the Scottish Conservatives; Paul O\u2019Kane of the Scottish Labour Party and Scottish Government Minister for F&HE Ben Macpherson of the SNP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Members were particularly enthused with Ross Greer MSP\u2019s announcement that all seven of the Fair Work First criteria will now be extended to colleges as a condition of public funding and the announcement – a key recommendation from our Follow the Money report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley addressed guests in her speech, urging MSPs and guests to listen to the experts in the room on the current challenges facing the college sector, our EIS FELA members. EIS FELA Vice President Dr Thora Hands took some time in her speech to introduce the EIS FELA funding report \u2018Follow the Money\u2019 outlining its key concerns and recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event then moved to group discussions where members from UHI partner colleges, Forth Valley, Fife and Dundee & Angus colleges spoke to their particular local issues and urged MSPs and guests in attendance to heed their warnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
National rep, Pete Woods, said \u201cThis was a valuable and effective exercise in ensuring MSPs were exposed to the maximum number of our key issues as possible. It was great to see MSPs engaged in detailed conversations with reps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, the reception marked a constructive and timely intervention in the national conversation on further education funding. However, as members and representatives remarked, only sustained political will and meaningful investment will secure sustainability and Fair Work in the FE sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EIS FELA held their parliamentary reception on the evening of the Scottish Budget, the 13th of January 2026. MSPs, representatives from Colleges Scotland and EIS FELA members came together in a night of discussion around the future of funding in the sector. The event was co-hosted by representatives from all major parties in Scottish Parliament: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2770,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/feb2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}