The number of college students in Scotland leaving their studies saw an increase during the pandemic.

That was one finding in a Scottish government report into the harm that Covid-19 had on students and staff in higher and further education.

It also warned drop-out rates could rise further and this year’s college enrolment was “considerably down”.

College bosses said despite efforts to deliver learning remotely, “the level of disruption was unprecedented”.

In March 2020 the nationwide lockdown resulted in an abrupt end to in-person learning for pupils and students.

College and university teaching was done remotely for the rest of the 2019-20 academic year and for much of 2020-21.

The report, which focused on the “indirect, wider harms of the pandemic”, said that although the 2021-22 session has been closer to what it was pre-Covid there was still “an ongoing cumulative wider impact on students and learners”.

It looked at three areas including:

• higher education,
• further education,
• and community learning and development in Scotland.

The report said that some of the wider harms “would not be unique to these sectors and are also likely to have affected other groups”.

In its focus on colleges, the paper said: “College and student representatives explained that the number of students dropping out of courses has increased. Further increases in drop-out rates remain a serious risk and new entrants who started in January 2022 are another at-risk cohort.”

It went on to explain that the overall numbers of college enrolments were “considerably down in the current academic year” due to a number of factors.

More pupils had opted to stay on at school and more school pupils had secured university places. Added to that, there had been a greater availability of low skilled jobs and college course numbers had been capped as a result of physical distancing requirements.

The latest leaver destination survey, published in February 2022, indicated that the proportion of school leavers at either university or college had increased from 44.2% in 2019-20 to 45.1% in 2020-21.

However, the proportion of school leavers in further education fell from 28.1% to 23.3% and the proportion of school leavers who were unemployed fell from 6.0% to 4.2%.

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