THE comment that caused most offence at the time was about flower arranging.

As criticism of the Scottish Government’s policy to prioritise full-time college courses began to mount the issue was raised at a meeting of Holyrood’s education committee in October 2012.

Michael Russell, the then Education Secretary, was fielding difficult questions about why the number of part-time places was plummeting so dramatically.

It was then that a friendly voice on the committee - SNP MSP Joan McAlpine - offered some words of support.

She told Mr Russell: “Other members of the committee talked earlier about falling student numbers and the figure of 70,000 was mentioned.

“Would those student numbers include someone like me taking a course in flower arranging for an hour a week?”

While the intervention was technically true, it prompted a sharp intake of breath from many who worked in the college sector who felt it unfairly trivialised the importance of short, part-time courses.

For colleges, some of these courses act as a crucial bridge to get those who have missed out on qualifications the first time around back into the education system.

Others are valuable in their own right for the skills they provide and the flexibility they offer.

To be fair to the Scottish Government the policy had its roots in a genuine desire to tackle youth unemployment in 2010 at a time when the impact of the financial crisis of 2007/08 was biting.

With public funds being squeezed ministers decided the most appropriate use of limited finances was to focus on full-time courses for 16 to 24-year-olds leading to a recognised qualification.

As a result, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) stopped funding courses that were fewer than ten hours long from 2010/11 onwards.

However, as ever when pulling a particular policy lever, there were unintended consequences.

The first was the dramatic decline in the number of students at Scottish colleges, with headcount falling by 123,000 from 350,00 to 227,000 between 2010 and 2015.

The second consequence was that the new focus on younger learners impacted most significantly on older people wanting to get back into the jobs market - many of whom were women juggling family responsibilities.

In 2007/08, there were nearly 182,000 females studying part-time courses at college, but that number fell to 101,000 in 2013.

None of this went un-noticed either in political circles or in the wider educational community where lecturing unions, student bodies and even college principals began to raise the alarm.

The fact ministers have now changed tack has been widely welcomed, but there is still concern over the full impact of the policy.

In its 2016 report into colleges Audit Scotland said neither the government nor the SFC had analysed the changes meaning there was no way of knowing the impact on those unable to get a place or what they had chosen to do instead.