Scottish Funding Council

The Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, more commonly known as the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), is the body in Scotland that distributes funding from the Scottish Government to the country's colleges and universities. It was set up by the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005, and was established on 3 October 2005 when the Scottish Further Education Funding Council and the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council merged.

Contents

Role of the SFC

The Council’s main role is to distribute funding to colleges and universities in Scotland. In 2009-10, the Council allocated about £1.7 billion for the support of learning and teaching, research and other activities.

The Council also:

Status

SFC is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) of the Scottish Government. That status allows the Council to act at ‘arms length’ from Government and, in doing so, to:

The Scottish Government is responsible for providing strategic guidance to the Council.

The Council's funding contributes towards the costs of learning and teaching, skills development, research, innovation and other costs such as staff, buildings and equipment in Scotland's 15 universities and five higher education institutions(collectively known as the university sector) and 43 further education (FE) colleges. The Council also provides resources to enable colleges to offer bursaries to students on non-advanced courses. The Council provides resources to FE colleges to support learners on FE programmes, in accordance with policies determined by the Scottish Government. Student support funding for learners on HE programmes (Higher National Certificate and above) is provided by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS).

The Council works closely with many stakeholder bodies to ensure that its strategies and the policies of the Scottish Government are delivered effectively. These bodies include Scottish Enterprise, the Scotland's Colleges, Universities Scotland, NUS Scotland, the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the other UK funding bodies.

See also

External links