Posted by admin on December 19, 2013 ·
© AJ Enterprises
…to all AJ Enterprises’ clients, associates, suppliers and collaborators, to contacts old and new – and to visitors to our website!
We’d also like to wish a very happy Christmas to Informed Scotland subscribers, with thanks for your support. It makes it all worthwhile when comments like this are received: ‘I just wanted to say thank you for this year’s briefings – they are appreciated and well used’.
There’s been plenty to write about in 2013; the hottest of Hot Topics were:
- Digital sector skills
- Knowledge exchange
- International agreements
- Youth employment & employability
- Collaboration across the landscape
- Skills shortage & gaps
The next issue will be the double December/January edition, due out in the week beginning 3 February 2014. It might be a holiday period but it’s already filling up with key items including a draft National Youth Work Strategy, a Digital Participation Inquiry Interim Report, the PISA results and reports of yet more skills shortages.
Make it your New Year’s resolution to be better informed about what’s happening across learning and skills in business, schools, further & higher education, community & adult learning, and government & wider society. Contact [email protected] to receive a recent sample copy and find out how to subscribe here.
Posted by admin on December 5, 2013 ·
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November was a more upbeat month for business and the economy, a relatively quiet one for schools, and a month packed with research funding announcements and collaborative projects for higher education.
Particular recruitment challenges and skills ‘potholes’ were highlighted in sectors including finance (Skills Development Scotland’s new Skills Investment Plan for financial services), oil & gas (Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce 19th Oil and Gas Survey and STEM (UKCES’s High-Level STEM skills report). It’s interesting to see the emphasis – and language – shift away from ‘hiring’ to training, updating, upskilling and retaining employees to fill skills shortages.
Those in the schools sector will no doubt find it interesting to read in a Higher Education Academy report that ‘supporting inter-disciplinary, inter-professional and cross-sectoral learning’ is a new idea for universities. Though one of our readers was surprised, commenting that some lecturers ‘had a better grasp of Curriculum for Excellence than the schools, albeit [they] thought it was just common sense and did not have a fancy title for it’!
And finally – is Aberdeen City Council training Directors of Education? Two senior Aberdeen figures have recently been appointed to head up other authorities’ services…
Become an Informed Scotland subscriber to keep on top of all the changes. Find out how to get your copy with all the details.
Posted by admin on November 8, 2013 ·
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Another month with very blurred boundaries between sectors – collaboration, and with some quite unexpected partners, is definitely the hottest topic! One of the reports summarised in this issue describes partnership working as ‘part of the DNA of the Scottish [higher education] sector’, leading to ‘research collaboration that leverages excellence’. This attitude to partnerships appears to be evident right across the learning and skills landscape.
Three particularly interesting reports worth highlighting from the Further & Higher Education section – British Council Scotland’s analysis of Scottish higher education’s ‘distinctive assets’; HEA Scotland & NUS Scotland’s Learning Journeys; and Universities Scotland’s Access all Areas.
Education engaging with business has returned to the headlines, kicked off by the Wood report (Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce – see September’s post). The current issue includes an item about the Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Chamber of Commerce five-year plan to establish partnerships with business in every secondary school. Brings back memories of Glasgow Education Business Partnership…
Become an Informed Scotland subscriber to keep on top of all the changes. Find out how to get your copy.
Posted by admin on October 28, 2013 ·
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An Informed Scotland Graduate Engineer Show Special has just been published ahead of our participation in the first event of its kind on 30 October. The Special captures appropriate highlights from the last three monthly issues, demonstrating the breadth of relevant activity right across the learning and skills landscape.
Copies of the Special will be available to pick up from our stand on Wednesday at The Roundhouse in Derby, where undergraduates and postgraduates, companies, universities and institutions from the sector will be gathering. Visitors to stand L11 will also be able to sign up for complimentary copies of Informed Scotland, and find out about our Learning & Skills Events Calendar.
If you’d like a free copy of the Special please send your details to [email protected]
We’re also delighted to announce our support at the Show for enginterns – the website launched this year by Strathclyde University undergraduates as a one-stop-shop for engineering students ‘to search and discover work opportunities with companies around the UK’. We’ve arranged for their flyers to be printed so information about this great start-up can be shared with Show delegates.
We hope to see you at stand L11 alongside our associate emh connect’s UK Digest. We’ll be tweeting when we get chance: @InformedScot and #gradengshow.
Posted by admin on October 24, 2013 ·
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On 30th October Informed Scotland will be at the UK’s first Graduate Engineer Show at The Roundhouse in Derby. We’re sharing a stand with emh connect’s UK Digest. It’s a fantastic opportunity to engage with business and students face-to-face in a sector that is constantly highlighted in our monthly publications.
The Show will bring together 50 of the UK’s major engineering organisations including Shell, BP, Rolls Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens and Baker Hughes, plus engineering institutions, skills bodies and universities. Half of the exhibitors have a presence in Scotland.
Over 1300 engineering students from 66 universities across the country are registered to attend. Those making the trip from Scotland include Glasgow, Edinburgh and Glasgow Caledonian University undergraduates.
Ken Davies, Director of The Graduate Engineer Show, decided to create the event after sensing a general disillusionment amongst students and employers with the traditional careers fair. It is also a smart way to showcase a sector full of opportunities. Ken commented, ‘The shortage of UK educated graduate engineers, particularly women, emerging from universities in the next decade is alarming, and is likely to lead to a significant intensification of the competition for these graduates over the next few years.’
We’re excited to be involved in the event, sensing that the interest it has already generated from both industry and education will ensure it won’t be a one-off. An Informed Scotland Graduate Engineer Show Special issue is being produced to highlight the breadth of relevant learning and skills activity across the landscape. More on that later..!
Posted by admin on October 4, 2013 ·
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The hottest topics this month were creative learning and digital skills, key areas for development, progress – and some concern – right across the landscape.
Major publications summarised in the September issue include the first report from the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce; Creative Scotland’s new Creative Learning Plan; and UKCES’s Technology and Skills in the Digital Industries report.
The focal point for many announcements in the school sector was Education Scotland’s annual Scottish Learning Festival. New resources were launched, and agreements and funding commitments were made.
It was also a good place to spot items that might otherwise have slipped under the Informed Scotland radar – such as the launch of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’s online self-evaluation tool. Great to see how Iain Stewart has taken forward this development, enhancing an HMIE resource Angela had the pleasure to work on a few years ago!
Find out how to get your copy with all the details. New subscribers will also receive a copy of our Organisations & People Special issued in August.
Bright Writing’s Sue Moody commented, ‘The Organisations and People list is extremely useful for me – worth the subscription itself!’
Posted by admin on September 11, 2013 ·
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After a relatively slow start to July, the rest of the summer weeks were packed with announcements, initiatives, spending commitments and, of course, exam results.
One of the busiest sectors was higher education, particularly in forging new partnerships – for knowledge exchange with business, for research and new courses, at home and internationally.
The knowledge exchange items ranged from resource, a new creative hub at Heriot-Watt’s School of Textiles & Design; to wave and windpower partnerships; a new BBC R&D initiative involving six UK universities including Dundee; and a new seafood think tank at Stirling.
However, our new favourite description of knowledge transfer came from an item about Shell’s new Geoscience Exploration centre at Heriot-Watt – Shell refers to it as ‘innovation through active partnership’ – perfect!
Find out how to get your copy with all the details – new subscribers will also receive a copy of our Organisations & People Special issued last month.
Follow Informed Scotland on Twitter @InformedScot.
Posted by admin on August 29, 2013 ·
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An Informed Scotland Organisations & People Special has just been published to coincide with the start of the 2013–14 academic session.
The Special captures the key national and local organisations operating across business, education, community & adult learning, government and wider society, including details of all:
- Sector Skills Councils
- Local authorities
- Teacher education institutions
- Colleges – merged, preparing to merge and unchanged
- Universities
Subscribers received the Special issue as a bonus, in addition to their regular monthly digests. Initial feedback has been very positive, with comments describing it as ‘easy to follow’, and ‘yet another one stop shop’.
Dr Jenny Rees, former Vice-Principal at Edinburgh Napier University, thanked us for “a really useful list”.
The Special will be made available to all new subscribers – find out how to join the growing list and stay well informed.
Posted by admin on July 5, 2013 ·
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On the whole there was a slightly more optimistic tone to many of the items this month, particularly for employment and business confidence. The Schools section is the busiest, with new publications, projects, partnerships and awards, plus annual statistics for learners and teachers – all crammed in before the end of term.
The next regular issue will be the July/August edition which will be issued in on 10 September. However, subscribers will also receive a special Organisations & People edition in August at no extra charge. This has been prompted by the many changes at the top of major national and regional organisations, coupled with the structural changes going on in the college sector.
Thank you to all those ‘pioneers’ who have renewed their subscriptions! Tahir Mohammed, Qualifications Officer at the Scottish Qualifications Authority commented, “I read informed Scotland on a regular basis and found it very informative and interesting. It has all the information one needs about education in Scotland.”
Become an Informed Scotland subscriber and keep on top of all the changes; subscribe before the end of August to receive the special bonus Organisations & People edition!
Posted by admin on June 7, 2013 ·
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May was a busier month than expected across the whole learning and skills landscape. There were no major new policy announcements, just a lot of funding commitments, studies, hard work and results to write about.
Some particularly interesting reports are highlighted, including the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Tapping all our talents: Women in STEM and the Scottish Government’s Scotland’s Digital Future.
Universities Scotland’s Taking Pride in the Job: University action on graduate employability has some very useful reference points: A schematic of ‘The graduate employability landscape in Scotland’, including Enhancement Themes, Learning to Work 2, and Outcome Agreements; a spreadsheet of nationwide work placement schemes; and an interesting table of pre-conceptions held by SMEs and university students/graduates.
With the topic of the long term viability of massive open online courses (MOOCs) cropping up in a Twitter conversation, we also mention a timely University of Edinburgh report of its first six MOOCs. And thanks to Laurie O’Donnell for directing us to analysis of this report by blogger Donald Clark Plan B.
Find out how to get your copy, with all this and more and follow Informed Scotland on Twitter @InformedScot. Finally, a quick mention for our associate emh connect, also celebrating one year of the learning & skills UK Digest!
