It was another busy month for learning & skills across the landscape – with more hot topics than the front cover could accommodate. There are numerous key reports and announcements to look out for, including…
…quite a pile for the school sector:
Skills Development Scotland’s briefings on the views of pupils & parents on career education and post-school plans
Scottish Qualifications Authority’s Prospectus for Change, a ‘blueprint’ for Qualifications Scotland, set to replace the SQA in late 2025, and the ‘Your Voice’ initiative, encouraging educators, learners and parents to get involved in the process
The next issue will be the Dec/Jan edition out in February 2025. However in January look out for the 12th annual stocktake of Learning & Skills ‘Hottest Topics’ from Informed covers in 2024.
It was a busy month for learning & skills, including the start of Education Scotland’s Curriculum Improvement Cycle – a review of all curricular areas, described as ‘evolving’ Curriculum for Excellence, not ‘ripping it up’. Recruitment is underway for practitioners to get involved in various ways.
Reports worth drawing your attention to this month:
ADES and Staff College’s detailed Perspectives on AI in Education with insights into the views of learners and teachers drawn from their project led by Horizons Research
There were more closures over the summer. As well as SEET and SUII covered in our August news blog, Moat Brae, which opened in 2019 as Scotland’s National Centre for Children’s Literature & Storytelling, closed its doors due to funding difficulties. Plus in the space of three weeks, Scottish Government opened then cancelled applications for its Fairer Workplaces Funding.
Meanwhile, Jisc and all its sub-brands including HESAceased all activity on X (formerly Twitter). Is this is the start of the threatened mass exodus? @InformedScot is still active on X, though I’ve been monitoring and trying other similar platforms. Just joined Bluesky, which has a familiar feel to it and feels the most promising so far – take a look, and hope to see you on there!
This is the tip of the information iceberg: become an Informed Scotland subscriber so you can keep on top of all the developments. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.
Sharing feedback from a subscriber for our Organisations & People Special published last month: So useful to have all these key contacts updated and in a single document. All new subscribers receive a copy.
The 12th Informed Scotland Organisations & People Special has just been published to coincide with the start of the 2024–25 academic session.
This annual snapshot of an active, ever-changing landscape helps Informed subscribers quickly locate the key learning & skills organisations and make sense of where they fit into the bigger picture. They find it a useful directory of the main bodies and institutions operating across business, education, community & adult learning, government and wider society.
There are links to over 430 organisations – over twice as many as in the first edition in 2013 – with 15 organisations included for the first time. Listings include:
Skills, training, careers and qualifications bodies
Sector-specific skills organisations
Local authority education departments
Colleges and universities
Teacher education institutions
Developing the Young Workforce regional groups
Knowledge exchange, research pools and innovation centres
Subject associations and networks
National resources, libraries and science centres.
Notes throughout highlight the changes over the past year, including numerous new appointments, promotions and retirements among senior leaders and key contacts.
Four organisations have been rebranded/renamed, including the Scottish Council for Development & Industry – now Prosper, and its Young Engineers & Science Clubs Scotland – now Stemovators.
Sadly, four long-standing organisations closed during the year. Gone are:
Scottish European Educational Trust (SEET) after 30 years; thankfully SEET’s two main projects will continue, having been picked up by SCILT (Scotland’s National Centre for Languages)
And Curiosity Collective, previously Children’s University Scotland, is in the process of winding down after ten years.
Become an Informed Scotland subscriber at any point and receive a copy of the Special – last year a subscriber said it was ‘a great resource’ that they ‘would highly recommend to education and skills colleagues operating in Scotland’. And although changes continue, the monthly digests keep you updated throughout the year.
This is the tip of the information iceberg: become an Informed Scotland subscriber so you can keep on top of all the developments. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.
Despite the run up to the General Election there was still a lot happening in learning & skills in Scotland in June.
There were three legislation announcements – all with consultations over the summer:
The Education (Scotland) Bill, setting out legislation to replace the SQA with Qualifications Scotland and create an HM Chief Inspector of Education role to take on the inspection functions currently within Education Scotland. Two Scottish Parliament committees have called for views – deadline 30 August. Separate to the Bill, Scottish Government also announced a revised remit for Education Scotland.
Scottish Government launched a consultation on legislation for Post-School Education and Skills Reform, proposing changes to the roles of the three funding bodies: the Student Awards Agency Scotland, Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland – deadline 20 September.
A new Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) [Member’s] Bill to ensure that all pupils in state and grant-aided schools will be able to have at least four nights and five days of residential outdoor education during their time at school – deadline for Parliament committee calls for views is 4 September.
Meanwhile, across the learning & skills landscape, AI and generative AI continue to be a major focus for discussion and development, including:
A Hays survey of AI use in recruitment by both job candidates and employers
QAA Scotland’s evaluation of the impact of 20 years of its Enhancement Themes activities.
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy. Subscribe before September and receive the 2024 Organisations & People Special to find out who’s where in Scottish learning & skills.
Ahead of each major election, Informed Scotland subscribers receive a brief scan of manifestos and resources focusing on or highlighting learning and skills issues.
Manifestos, including from Colleges Scotland, the EIS, Universities Scotland, NUS Scotland, Enginuity, Scottish Chambers of Commerce, Prosper, FSB, the Institute of Student Employers and National Centre for Universities & Business
Resources, such as Education Scotland’s guidance for teachers and ‘You decide’ political literacy resource; collections of resources from Democracy Classroom and Twinkl, and the Electoral Commission’s Educator Handbook for teachers of 14–18 year-olds
Campaigns such as Enable Scotland’s Enable the Vote for people with a learning disability and YouthLink Scotland’s support for the Give an X campaign
Projects such as Children in Scotland’s 2023–26 Youth Voice Network for Scotland commissioned by the Electoral Commission
Summaries and analyses of pledges from the main parties published by organisations including the Higher Education Policy Institute, Times Higher Education, Fraser of Allander Institute, London Economics, the BBC and Sky News.
Not a subscriber? Click here to download your free copy!
May was a much busier month for learning & skills in Scotland. The latest digest is packed with reports, announcements and guidance of interest across the landscape, including:
This edition marks Informed Scotland’s 12th anniversary
It’s always revealing to recall what was shaping the learning & skills landscape in May 2012, with an eye to what’s changed – or not. Youth unemployment was a shocking 23.1%. Education Scotland had just audited secondary school preparations for implementing Curriculum for Excellence. The regionalisation of Scotland’s 41 colleges was underway. The Scottish Parliament was set to increase free early learning & childcare from 475 to 600 hours per year. A Parliament Committee concluded that the attainment gap for looked after children was ‘unacceptably wide’. But there was no mention of green skills or energy transition in a press release for Scottish Enterprise’s new Oil & Gas Strategy 2012 2020: Maximising our Future.
Particular thanks to those of you who’ve been subscribing since the start – who’d have thought it would still be going, 121 issues later!
Informed Scotland Extra – General Election 2024
As usual ahead of a major election, an ‘Election Extra’ is in the pipeline, containing links to manifestos and resources that focus on or highlight learning and skills issues. It’ll be sent to subscribers and available here for anyone to download free of charge later this month. Send your email address to [email protected] if you’d prefer to receive it direct.
Don’t miss out! Become an Informed Scotland subscriber so you too can keep on top of all the developments. Email [email protected] to request a copy of the latest issue.
With political uncertainty across the UK, plus funding challenges and the Easter break, April was the quietest month for a while for learning and skills.
The impact of financial pressures can be seen right across the landscape, most clearly in some of the hard decisions taken recently.
Such as removing the Upskilling Fund for universities, a casualty of the Scottish Funding Council’s ‘difficult choices’ with university funding allocations. Skills Development Scotland’s update that there will be no Individual Training Accounts money available for 2024/25. And the John Muir Trust’s worrying pause in the John Muir Award due to ‘a serious financial deficit’.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Interesting and somewhat more upbeat items to look out for include:
Findings from an Open University survey of employers’ views of young people in the workplace
Development of a new Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework for Scotland by partners including the SFC, QAA Scotland, College Development Network and Education Scotland
Plus Digital Schools Awards Scotland’s new Digital Award for early learning & childcare settings, supported by Education Scotland.
Another month with no major learning & skills announcements.
Normally this would be seen as welcome news by many who value the space to get on with the task at hand. However, the ‘lull’ in decision-making on school education reform in particular is raising tensions and anticipation, and creating new challenges.
As two of education’s wise owls, Prof Chris Chapman and Prof Graham Donaldson of the University of Glasgow write, ‘Financial pressures have become even more apparent, complicating the possibilities of achieving ambitious reform’. Not to mention the ‘series of further developments and reviews’.
Their paper, Leading from the Classroom, hopes to ‘[stimulate] the discussion, thinking and the calculated risk taking required to catalyse the development of a Scottish education system that can lead, rather than respond to, the local and global challenges of the future’.
Watch this space – but perhaps don’t hold your breath.
In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep us occupied, including research reports, annual statistics and surveysworth delving into:
Our monthly intelligence digest of Scottish Learning and Skills
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