This is an Official Statistics publication. All Official Statistics should comply with the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics, which promotes the production and dissemination of Official Statistics that inform decision-making. Find out more about the Code of Practice for Statistics at the UK Statistics Authority’s website.

An infographic that highlights key statistics from the publication.

Overview

College Staffing key points 2024-25

This report is an overview of staff employed in Scotland’s college education sector from 2015-16 to 2024-25. It provides sector summary data on teaching and non-teaching (support) staff by full-time equivalent (FTE) and headcount.

The publication is split into two sections:

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

  • Headcount is based on the number of staff employed in a 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 2024-25, 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, and the impact of that is seen in the figures presented in this report.

The key points from this report are:

Full-time equivalent

  • 9,775 FTE staff were employed in colleges in 2024-25, a decrease of 340 (-3.4%) from the previous year. See Figure 1.

  • The ten-year trend in FTE staff from the 2015-16 starting position represents a decrease of 9.9% (-1,080). See Figure 1.

  • Full-time staff (6,735 FTE) decreased by 12.5% since 2015-16, whereas part-time staff (3,040 FTE) decreased by 3.7%. See Figure 1.

  • In 2024-25, 4,740 FTE (48.5%) were teaching staff and 5,030 (51.5%) were non-teaching staff. See Figure 2.

  • Teaching staff decreased by 11.6% (-625 FTE) between 2015-16 and 2024-25, and non-teaching staff decreased by 8.3% (-455 FTE). See Figure 2.

Headcount

  • The staff headcount in 2024-25 was 12,575, a decrease of 520 (-4.0%) from the previous year. See Figure 4.

  • Females accounted for 60.5% of the total staff headcount in 2024-25, with 3,250 teaching staff and 4,355 non-teaching staff. See Figures 4 & 5.

  • Of the 205 senior management roles in 2024-25 the proportion of females (55.1%) increased by 0.8 percentage points (pp) from the previous year (54.3%).

  • The 51 and over age group accounted for 47.6% of the overall staff in 2024-25, a 5.8pp increase from 2015-16’s figure of 41.8%. See Figure 6.

  • College staff with a declared disability made up 8.0% (1,010) of all college headcounts in 2024-25, whereas the proportion in the Scottish population is 20.7%. See Figure 8.

  • Minority ethnic (ME) staff made up 3.0% (375) of all headcounts in 2024-25 . The proportion of ME female teaching staff (2.6%) decreased by 0.1pp since the previous year. The proportion of ME male teaching staff also decreased by 0.3pp to 2.7%. See Figure 9.

  • College staff known nationality proportions in 2024-25 were: 93.4% UK, 4.4% EU and 2.3% non-EU international. See Figure 10.

  • The proportion of full-time permanent college teaching staff with a formally recognised teaching qualification (84.6%) decreased by 1.0% from the previous year. See Table 1.

Section 1: Full-time equivalent staffing data

The charts presented in the following section show different breakdowns of staff FTEs by occupation type and mode of employment.

Figure 1: Staff FTE by mode of employment, 2015-16 to 2024-25

Figure 2: Staff FTE by occupation, 2015-16 to 2024-25

Figure 3: Teaching staff FTE by mode of employment, 2015-16 to 2024-25

Section 2: Headcount staffing data

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

Figure 4: Staff headcount by sex, 2015-16 to 2024-25

Figure 5: Teaching staff headcount by sex, 2015-16 to 2024-25

Figure 6: Staff headcount by age group, 2015-16 to 2024-25

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

Figure 7: Staff population pyramid by age band and sex, 2024-25

Figure 8: Proportion of staff with a disability, 2024-25

Figure 9: Staff from a minority ethnic (ME) background by sex and occupation, 2017-18 to 2024-25

Figure 10: Staff headcount by known nationality, 2024-25

Figure 11: Teaching staff by qualification category, 2015-16 to 2024-25

Table 1: Number and proportion of staff with a recognised teaching qualification, 2015-16 to 2024-25

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

Academic
Year		 Permanent Full-time Permanent Part-time Temporary Full-time Temporary Part-time
2015-16 3,245 1,750 40 580
2016-17 3,200 1,820 40 675
2017-18 3,210 1,945 40 480
2018-19 3,220 2,015 60 435
2019-20 3,200 2,240 45 370
2020-21 3,125 2,275 50 300
2021-22 3,175 2,265 50 290
2022-23 3,130 2,260 40 310
2023-24 2,840 2,095 35 225
2024-25 2,665 1,995 35 205
Academic
Year		 Permanent Full-time* Permanent Part-time Temporary Full-time Temporary Part-time
2015-16 88.4% 78.9% 58.6% 46.3%
2016-17 88.9% 81.1% 48.8% 50.8%
2017-18 87.8% 80.0% 45.6% 40.9%
2018-19 86.7% 76.6% 53.2% 40.3%
2019-20 88.8% 79.0% 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 85.6% 81.1% 50.7% 50.0%
2024-25 84.6% 80.9% 54.5% 44.0%
* 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 see the College Staffing Guidance