11
City of Glasgow College Annual Report & Accounts 2020-21
188,110 credits, exceeding its target of 186,034 by
2,076 credits (1.1%).
Moreover, by increasing the volume of learning delivered
(an additional 5,518 credits on the 2019-20 total of
182,592) the College also met Scottish Government
targets for additional activity - delivering 5,936 credits in
support of the National Transition Training Fund (NTTF) &
Young Person Guarantee (YPG).
Number of learners
Despite reports that only 1 in 5 students with offers
were likely to take up their University/College place in
the Autumn of 2020, conversion rates from application
to enrolment at City were higher than in previous years
and 89% of Students rated their overall experience of
the application process as Good. Ultimately, over 27,000
learners enrolled at the College; more than 11,000 on a
full-time basis.
The majority of these learners, around 55%, 15,691,
were enrolled on courses publicly funded by the Scottish
Funding Council. The remainder (45%) were recruited on
to courses delivered in partnership with industry and our
overseas partners.
Each year a number of learners leave a course within
its first few months. These learners are not funded by
the SFC. This year just over 1300 learners left - around
8% of those on publicly funded courses. This number is
consistent with previous years and typical of the sector
as a whole.
Learner Success
At the time of writing this report the College is unable
to compare its performance with the rest of the College
sector. This is because national analysis of performance
data has yet to be concluded by the Scottish Funding
Council. We can, though, make comparisons with
previous year's performance.
Due to the time-lag in reporting national data, we also
make reference to performance outcomes from AY 2019-
20 where they may have not been reported elsewhere.
In AY 2019/20, the College exceeded the sector average
for the numbers of learners successfully completing
full-time courses, for FE and HE by 3 percentage points
(68.8% vs 65.7%) (76.7% vs 73.4%) respectively.
While this year's performance will only really make sense
when contextualised against the rest of the sector,
continued lockdowns have meant the College has faced
unprecedented challenges in sustaining the continuity of
learning, with the result that over 2500 students (14% of
enrolments) have been required to extend, defer or repeat
their studies.
On that basis we can see that in AY2020-21, the impact
of the pandemic is now evident:
• Persistent lockdowns have had a marked impact on
FE part-time enrolments, which declined by around
5500 on previous years, as practical short courses
where suspended.
• Elsewhere enrolments increased and the College
continues to be on track against its strategic priority to
increase HE FT enrolments, which increased again this
year by 140.
• Performance in the first half of the year was better than
expected. Early Withdrawal was down in all categories
of Full-Time provision, both FE and HE - at 5.1% and
2.5% of all enrolments, compared with 6% and 4%
last year.
• Further Withdrawal increased as lockdowns persisted,
at 20% and 13% for FT FE and HE, compared
with 12% and 8% last year. Compared to 19-20, a
further 309 learners withdrew, making a total of 2495
withdrawn learners compared to 2186 in 19-20.
Despite the challenges, Faculties have largely maintained
the success of last year, achieving, again, a record
high rate for the number of HE students successfully
completing their full-time courses. We note the evident
challenges in FE where the biggest impact of lockdown
can be seen. There has been a significant increase this
year in the number of further withdrawals.
Successful
Completion Rate
20-21 19-20 Change
FE FT 62% 69% -7pp
FE PT 84% 83% +1pp
HE FT 77% 77% Sustained
HE PT 82%% 81.5% + 0.5pp