STRIKING college workers in Edinburgh took their fight for better pay and against cuts to Bute House today.

Members of the college lecturers’ union EIS-FELA gathered outside the First Minister’s official residence at 8.30am, as Humza Yousaf prepared his resignation speech.

They called for cuts of £32.7 million to the sector this year to be ditched and for intervention on a pay dispute with College Employers Scotland, which has seen them without a pay rise for almost three years amid rampant inflation.

Addressing the rally, college lecturer Mike Cowley said: “We give it our all, heart and soul, every single day to working-class kids who are seeking out another opportunity — perhaps their only opportunity to realise their dreams.

“They don’t only want to go into vocational jobs — because the arbiters of our system seem to want to narrow the sector to be a conveyor belt to occupations — they want to be poets, artists, social scientists, graphic artists… whatever their dreams lead them to be, and for the working class, further education offers those pathways.”