Issue 93 includes key COVID-19 guidance up to and including 13 September.
National Qualifications results day passed by quietly this summer. However, the debate about the future of exams continues to grow, sparked by the publication of the OECD’s report on Upper-secondary education student assessment in Scotland commissioned by the Scottish Government.
Three strategies relevant to learning & skills in Scotland were published, two by the UK Government on Innovation and R&D People & Culture.
The other was a new five-year Public Library Strategy for Scotland by SLIC. As a firm believer in the power of libraries, I’m happy to spread the word about a Support our Libraries campaign launched by Scotland on Sunday to ‘highlight their work, tell their stories and push for their futures’. Also look out for Libraries Week organised by CILIP from 4–10 October.
However, at a time when lifelong learning is so vital, it’s particularly sad that Scotland’s Learning Partnership has had to cancel the 2021 Adult Learners’ Week in Scotland due to uncertainty over funding – this would have been its 30th anniversary year.
Registration is open for the fourth annual David Raffe Memorial Lecture, to be delivered by Prof Ewart Keep on ‘transitions from learning to earning and on the wider relationship between education and the labour market’. It will take place online on 3 November hosted by Moray House School of Education & Sport, and InformedScotland’s Angela Gardner has been asked to lead the Q&A session.
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy from Angela and discover what you’re missing.
The ninth Informed Scotland Organisations & People Special has just been published to coincide with the start of the 2021–22 academic session.
This annual snapshot of a busy, dynamic landscape helps our subscribers to quickly locate the key 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, including:
Sector-specific skills bodies
Local authority education departments and regional improvement collaboratives
Colleges and universities
Teacher education institutions
Developing the Young Workforce regional groups
Knowledge exchange, research pools & innovation centres
National resources, libraries and science centres
With 21 additions, there are now links to over 400 organisations, over twice as many as in the first edition in 2013.
Notes throughout highlight the changes over the past year, including new organisations, mergers and rebrands, and new appointments, promotions and retirements. Sorry to see the Scottish Institute for Enterprise and Scottish Drama Training Network have closed down since the 2020 edition.
All new subscribers receive a copy – join the growing list and stay well informed.
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy from Angela and discover what you’re missing.
Issue 92 includes key guidance up to and including 9 July.
The hottest topic in June was the final report of the OECD review of Curriculum for Excellence, with the Scottish Government accepting all 12 recommendations and announcing significant changes ahead for the qualifications, curriculum and inspection bodies. We’ve provided our subscribers with a helpful Annex containing the recommendations and response in full.
Had it not been for the above, the Scottish Funding Council’s review of tertiary education & research would have taken the headlines with its final report. We’ll have to wait until September for the Scottish Government’s response to this one, however.
These weren’t the only major reports; take a look at:
Plus there was the usual batch of statistical reports and surveys, including on school leavers, looked after children, attainment, apprenticeships, students and graduates.
We don’t just cover reports and big announcements… On an enterprising, musical note, the University of the West of Scotland launched Damfino Records, a record label to be run by students. It’s not the first though: Edinburgh Napier University students launched Mirror Glass Records in May 2021, Aberdeen University created Vox Regis in 2016 – and Glasgow Kelvin College launched Electric Honey in 1992! Did I miss any? Any before 1992?
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy from Angela and discover what you’re missing.
Issue 91 includes key guidance up to and including 5 June.
This edition marks nine years since the first issue of Informed Scotland. With youth unemployment currently at 8.0%, it’s reassuring to be reminded that, as well as being down from 12.0% last year, in May 2012 it was a shocking 23.1%.
Interestingly, Informed 1 reported on the first survey, ESS 2011, published by the much missed UKCES. Back then, 14% of vacancies were due to skills shortages – in the current survey that was up to 21%. Conversely, fewer employers currently have skills gaps among the workforce (12%, vs 16% in 2011), and fewer have underutilised/over-skilled/over-qualified staff (33%, vs 58%).
A number of the new Scottish Government’s plans and priorities are relevant to learning & skills. In her 26 May Priorities of Government Statement, the First Minister said that ‘support for skills and young people is part of our wider mission to create a fairer Scotland’. (Informed 91 also includes a list of relevant Cabinet members and Parliament spokespeople for our subscribers’ ease of reference.)
But the main talking point has been the SQA’s National Qualifications – the controversial alternative certification model and appeals service for 2020/21 – swiftly followed by the announcement that reforms are planned for the SQA and Education Scotland. Meanwhile in higher education, a Jisc and Emerge Education Rethinking assessment report is encouraging universities to take the opportunity of the pandemic to make assessment ‘more relevant, adaptable and trustworthy’. Time perhaps for some cross-fertilisation of thinking and approaches.
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy from Angela and discover what you’re missing.
Issue 90 includes key guidance up to and including 6 May.
With political lockdown in place for the Scottish Parliament elections, April was the quietest month for learning & skills in a while. That said, there was no shortage of developments and reports to cover.
A number of reports provide evidence of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the learning and employment experiences of young people, and on those Skills Development Scotland (SDS) refers to as ‘equality groups’ – women, and minority ethnic, disabled and disadvantaged people. The reports include:
The Darkest Hour? by the Centre for Research on Learning & Life Chances, UCL Institute of Education, on the learning experiences, wellbeing and expectations of 16 to 25 year-olds during lockdown
Uneven steps by the Resolution Foundation, on changes in youth unemployment and study.
Away from Covid-19, these reports on HE admissions,school policies and artificial intelligence are well worth a read:
UCAS’s Reimagining UK admissions, highlighting the issues and challenges specific to Scotland in implementing the new proposed model
Ahead of each major election we provide Informed Scotland subscribers with a brief scan of manifestos and resources focusing on or highlighting learning and skills issues.
The Scottish Parliament Election Extra 2021 has links to:
Manifestos, including from Children in Scotland, the EIS, ADES, University & College Union Scotland, Universities Scotland, the OU in Scotland, CIPD Scotland, YouthLink Scotland the CBI, FSB and the Commission on School Reform
Resources, such as Education Scotland’s ‘You decide’ on political literacy, Young Scot’s ‘Everything You Need to Know About the Scottish Parliament Election’, and the Electoral Commission’s Education handbook for teachers of 14–18 year-olds
Campaigns such as CILIP’s #LibrariesAreEssential and Enable Scotland’s #ENABLEThevote for people with a learning disability
Summaries of pledges from the main parties published by organisations including BBC Scotland, Tes Scotland and Wonkhe.
Not a subscriber? Click here to download your free copy.
Issue 89 includes key announcements and guidance up to and including 8 April.
March was another busy month, with the added pile of strategies and manifestos published ahead of the Scottish Parliament election. Four key themes dominated:
With the Scottish Parliament election looming, we’ll be publishing a brief Election Extra later this month with links to manifestos and resources relevant to learning & skills.
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy and discover what you’re missing.
Want to keep on top of all the developments? Become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a complimentary copy – and discover what you’re missing.
Issue 87 includes key announcements and guidance up to and including 12 February.
This edition of Informed Scotland is the biggest ever published, summarising an incredibly busy, productive couple of months for learning & skills. Hard to fathom, when so many are achieving all this from home, and when every day feels pretty similar to the one before!
Numerous new courses were announced and resources launched, as organisations and individuals across the landscape work incredibly hard to provide support for learners and educators in all sectors and at every stage.
Many interesting, important and/or informative reports were published. Not all of them are COVID-19 driven, such as Skills Development Scotland’s first Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan, reminding us that there are other issues needing urgent attention, too.
Here are a few of the other reports worth highlighting:
On the subject of events: Our popular Learning & Skills Events Calendar has been in limbo since the first lockdown in March 2020 when all events were cancelled or moved online. I’m considering when to restart it – either now, for major online events, or wait until the time when face-to-face events can begin to resume. Would you find it useful now? I’d be really interested to hear your views – via @InformedScot on Twitter, or email [email protected]
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 copy of the latest issue.
We’re delighted to present the eighth annual list of Learning & Skills ‘Hot Topics’ that made it onto the cover of Informed Scotland over the past year:
=5. International collaboration, comparisons & perceptions (–)
=5. National Qualifications – exams & results (=4)
=5. Skills shortages – upskilling, reskilling & training (–)
A year ago, no one could have predicted that the hottest topic of 2020 would be the impact and response to a pandemic. Or that ‘online, remote & technology enhanced learning & teaching’ would have jumped from nowhere to second place because of a devastating virus.
‘Digital skills’ has maintained its status as the only issue to have been in the top three every year since 2013. In 2020 the focus on digital inclusion reached new levels of importance.
Two topics have made every annual list except one: ‘apprenticeships’ and ‘skills shortages’. This year the latter was more about the need for rapid upskilling, reskilling and retraining than the prediction of longer term skills gaps.
‘Widening & fair access’ dropped out of the list for the first time ever, although we expect it to return in 2021. Also just outside the top nine were ‘mental health & wellbeing’, ‘additional support for learning’ and ‘graduate recruitment & employment’, alongside ‘surveys’ and ‘student experience & perspective’.
What are your predictions for 2021? Tweet us @InformedScot and we’ll compare notes!
Make it your New Year’s resolution to be better informed about what’s happening across learning & skills in business, schools, further & higher education, community & adult learning, and government & wider society. Contact [email protected] to receive the latest copy and find out how to subscribe here.
Our monthly intelligence digest of Scottish Learning and Skills
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