Scottish Blog

The Scottish Funding Council is the body which governs the funding of Scotland’s colleges and universities.

The Scottish Funding Council, or the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council as it is formerly called, is a subset of the Scottish Executive. It was established on the 3rd of October, 2005 as a product of the “Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005”. It is an amalgamation of the old “Scottish Further Education Funding Council” and the “Scottish Higher Education Funding Council”.

Officially, the primary role of the Scottish Funding Council is to distribute government higher education funding to the colleges and universities of Scotland (in 2005-06 year, they distributed £1.3 billion). Along with this task, the Scottish Funding Council is also charged with the following tasks: advising the Scottish ministries to the future needs of higher education providers, it advises as to policy making to attain self sustainability for education providers, it monitors the financial running of universities and also it is charged with the maintaining and overlooking assessment of qualifications.

Because the Scottish Funding Council is meant to operate at an “arms length” from the government it is able and expected to provide impartial advice to the Scottish Ministries. It is also required that the Scottish Funding Council looks after it stakeholders, these include Association of Scottish Colleges, Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Office of Science and Technology and the Universities of Scotland.