Pay negotiations in FE, like in most sectors, can be a painful and protracted affair. But when the National Joint Council (NJC), made up of the NUT, NASUWT and ATL teaching unions, struck an agreement with the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association (SFCA) last year over a new pay and appraisal framework, its members could have been forgiven for feeling relatively satisfied.

One of the most significant elements, as far as they were concerned, was that the new system was designed to restore pay comparability with the schools sector - a long-standing bone of contention.

Certainly, when a 1 per cent pay rise for school teachers was recommended, the unions in the sixth-form college sector felt confident that the same would be applied to their members - this was what the NUT’s head of salaries, Andrew Morris, described as a “quid pro quo agreement” after staff had agreed to have their pay increases linked to appraisals.

“We have already effectively agreed to restore parity. We are not describing this as a pay claim, because in our view we have already agreed the structure,” he told TES last week.

The SFCA, however, doesn’t appear to concur. It described the NJC’s correspondence as a “pay claim” that was being considered and insisted that the “union side’s aspirations” must be weighed alongside “employer side pay policy”. There could be tense meetings ahead.

Glasswork shattered

You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, so the proverb goes. But recent events at City of Glasgow College suggest an alternative adage: you can’t open a £162 million campus without breaking kilns.

Glasgow’s Evening Times reports that classes in glasswork had to be dropped as, during the process of moving to the state-of-the-art new facility, all its kilns were “horrifically damaged”. One source said: “They are made of ceramic rods and it looks as though someone has picked them up and shaken them. None of them are operational. The main point of doing a glass course is being able to make things. Students can’t do that.”

As a result, the college was forced to cancel a £239-a-head evening course until the kilns could be repaired. But good news: the college says they’re now back in use once more. However, a word of advice for colleges embarking on multimillion-pound redevelopments - be a bit more careful, eh?

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