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An infographic that highlights key statistics from the publication.

Executive Summary

College Staffing key points 2023-24

This report is an overview of staff employed in the college education sector in Scotland from 2014-15 to 2023-24. It provides sector summary data on headcount and teaching and non-teaching (support) staff data by full-time equivalent (FTE) staff.

The publication is split into two sections:

  • FTE is based on the number of full-time equivalent staff employed in the college sector. Contracted hours are used as the basis for calculating FTEs and a full-time member of staff employed for the year would normally equate to an FTE of 1.

  • Headcount is based on the number of staff employed in the college during the academic year. Each member of staff is counted once, regardless of the number of hours/contracts for which they are employed.

In 2023-24, Colleges continued to operate in an extremely tight fiscal environment, with many challenges such as increased staff costs, rising energy costs, other continued inflationary pressures and increased interest rates impacting loan repayments. There has been significant voluntary severance activity in the sector in order to rebalance the financial position of Colleges – which is ongoing – and the impact of that is seen in figures presented in this report.

The key points from this report are:

Full-time equivalent

  • 10,112 FTE staff employed in colleges in 2023-24, a decrease of 845 (-7.7%) from the previous year. See Figure 1.

  • The ten-year trend from the 2014-15 starting position represents a decrease of 6.4% (-686). See Figure 1.

  • 4,960 FTE (49.0%) were teaching staff and 5,153 FTE (51.0%) non-teaching staff. See Figure 2.

  • Teaching staff decreased by 7.7% (-412 FTE) between 2014-15 and 2023-24 as did non-teaching staff 5.0% (-273 FTE). See Figure 2.

  • Full-time staff (6,866) decreased by 11.0% since 2014-15. See Figure 1.

  • Part-time staff (3,246) increased by 5.2% since 2014-15. See Figure 1.

Headcount

  • The staff headcount decreased by 1,055 (-7.5%) to 13,092 from 2022-23 (14,147). See Figure 4.

  • Females account for 61% of all staff headcount in 2023-24, 53.2% of teaching staff. See Figures 4 and 5.

  • Of the 221 senior management roles in 2023-24 the proportion of females increased by 3.1pp (55.2%) from 2022-23 (52.1%).

  • The 51 and over age group accounted for 47.7% of the overall staff in 2023-24 a 6.1pp increase from 2014-15’s figure of 40.7%. See Figure 6.

  • College staff with a declared disability made up 7.7% (1,006) of all headcounts in 2023-24, and the proportion of the Scottish population with a declared disability accounted for 20.7%. See Figure 8.

  • Black and minority ethnic staff made up 2.9% (382) of all headcounts in 2023-24. The proportion of BME female teaching staff increased by 0.4pp in the past year to 2.6% in 2023-24, compared to the 2022-23 figure. In addition, the proportion of BME male teaching staff has unchanged in the past year to (3.0%). See Figure 9.

  • College staff known nationality proportions: 93.9% UK, 4.1% EU, 2.0% Non-EU international in 2023-24. See Figure 10.

  • The proportion of full-time permanent college teaching staff with a formally recognised teaching qualification remains unchanged from 2022-23 to 2023-24 at 88.2%. See Table 1.

Section 1: Full-time equivalent staffing data

The charts presented in the following section show different breakdowns of staff full-time equivalents (FTE) by mode and occupation type.

Figure 1: Staff FTE by mode of employment 2014-15 to 2023-24

Figure 2: Staff FTE by occupation 2014-15 to 2023-24

Figure 3: Teaching Staff FTE by mode of employment 2014-15 to 2023-24

Section 2: Headcount staffing data

The following three charts show information about staff headcount by sex and age band.

Figure 4: Staff (teaching & non-teaching) headcount by sex 2014-15 to 2023-24

Figure 5: Teaching staff headcount by sex 2014-15 to 2023-24

Figure 6: Staff headcount (teaching & non-teaching) by age band 2014-15 to 2023-24

The remaining charts and tables show information about staff headcount by demographics, occupation type and qualification classification.

Figure 7: Population pyramid of age band population all staff by sex 2023-24

Figure 8: Proportion of college staff with a disability, 2023-24

Figure 9: Proportion of staff from a minority ethnic background by sex & role 2017-18 to 2023-24

Figure 10: Known nationality for all college staff 2023-24

Figure 11: Proportion of teaching staff by qualification category 2014-15 to 2023-24

Table 1: Number and proportion of staff with recognised teaching qualification 2014-15 to 2023-24

Note, additional figures on college headcount by teaching grade and qualification are shown in the publication appendix document.

Academic
Year		 Permanent Full-time Permanent Part-time Temporary Full-time Temporary Part-time
2014-15 3,277 1,736 49 635
2015-16 3,246 1,752 41 582
2016-17 3,200 1,820 41 676
2017-18 3,209 1,947 41 479
2018-19 3,222 2,017 58 436
2019-20 3,202 2,238 43 370
2020-21 3,124 2,277 51 301
2021-22 3,175 2,267 48 291
2022-23 3,129 2,260 40 309
2023-24 2,838 2,094 34 223
Academic
Year		 Permanent Full-time* Permanent Part-time Temporary Full-time Temporary Part-time
2014-15 87.8% 78.8% 60.5% 43.1%
2015-16 88.4% 78.9% 58.6% 46.3%
2016-17 88.9% 81.1% 48.8% 50.8%
2017-18 87.9% 80.0% 45.6% 40.9%
2018-19 86.7% 76.6% 53.2% 40.3%
2019-20 88.8% 81.3% 46.7% 41.7%
2020-21 86.8% 77.2% 53.7% 44.1%
2021-22 86.3% 78.8% 37.2% 43.4%
2022-23 88.2% 81.8% 37.7% 46.7%
2023-24 88.2% 81.1% 50.7% 50.0%
* Figures represent the national college performance measure: Proportion of full-time permanent teaching staff with a recognised teaching qualification

For further information on the staffing collection please refer to College Staffing Guidance