It’s extremely rare, but last month was a quiet one for learning & skills in Scotland. With mid-term holidays and the nation’s attention focused on… let’s just call them ‘other matters’, it wasn’t too surprising. Or perhaps the relentless pace of change and intensity of activity across the learning & skills landscape finally caught up with everyone, and this was the breather we all needed.
Although there were
no major announcements, a number of items are well worth highlighting:
A number of items focused on tackling poverty, prejudice and harassment, including reports by Universities Scotland on gender-based, and the Equality & Human Rights Commission on race-based, harassment in higher education
Numerous developments aimed to challenge gender imbalance, including a new Gender Commission focused on apprenticeships set up by SDS, the launch of Talent4Point0 to support the data and tech sector, and Equate Scotland’s Inclusive Value tool for the construction industry
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.
You can also keep up to date via Twitter @InformedScot where we’ve just hit 4,000 followers!
One of the main themes in September was ‘being better prepared for the future’, spearheaded by the Scottish Government’s new Future Skills Action Plan.
The sense of urgency we reported last month has grown, affected no doubt by heightened public concern about the climate ‘emergency’, the Brexit ‘crisis’ and the ‘threat’ of technology – all intrinsically linked to learning and skills.
Emphasis has shifted from debating what the future might hold, to acting now – trying to maximise opportunities and avoid worst-case scenarios by developing skills, reshaping education and encouraging lifelong learning.
The Future Skills Action Plan, for example, includes proposals for a Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan, and the intention to address skills gaps and shortages as a central part of the response to Brexit.
The Scottish Government’s new annual programme has a ‘continued focus on education and closing the attainment gap as [its] top priority’, although the phrase ‘defining mission’ doesn’t appear this year. This time last year the attention was on national assessments in Primary 1 – this year all eyes are on S4 to S6, with a Senior Phase review announced, following publication of a survey of headteachers and the Scottish Parliament Education & Skills Committee’s Subject choices in schools report of its inquiry.
Numerous consultations and reviews are seeking your input, including:
These are just highlights – become an Informed Scotland subscriber so you can keep on top of all the developments. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.
Learning & skills was a hive of hot topics over summer 2019. We could have added more to those listed on the cover, such as education & business engagement, mental health & wellbeing, community learning & development, STEM and skills for rural Scotland.
The words of the season were ‘upskilling’ and ‘reskilling’.
The need to prepare those already in the workplace for automation, future skills and work has taken on greater urgency as the pace of significant change increases. Add to that the shortage of ready-skilled, available candidates, exacerbated by Brexit uncertainty, and unsurprisingly we will see more of this over the months ahead.
In the meantime take a look at Scottish Funding Council’s guidance for a new Upskilling Fund for universities, and a Skills Development Scotland report on reskilling and upskilling for ecommerce.
Other studies, surveys and statistics worth seeking out:
The Open University’s third annual Business Barometer examining skills shortages
Fabulous feedback from a subscriber for our Organisations & People Special published earlier this month: I just wanted to thank you for this. It is an amazing piece of work, hugely useful.
Become
an Informed Scotland subscriber
so you can keep on top of all the developments. Email [email protected] to request a
sample copy.
It’s a snapshot of
a busy and ever-changing learning & skills landscape, helping our
subscribers to quickly locate the key organisations and make sense of where
they fit into the bigger picture.
Informed Scotland
subscribers 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 & innovation centres.
This year there are links to over 380 organisations, up 20 from 2018 and more than twice as many as in the first edition in 2013.
There have been
many changes since last year’s edition, including new organisations, name
changes, mergers and closures, and new appointments, promotions, movements and
retirements.
Gone are the Tech Partnership, National Skills Academy for Financial Services, Scottish Film Education and Scottish Waterways Trust, although much of their work has been picked up by other bodies including City & Guilds Group, Keep Scotland Beautiful and Screen Scotland.
Subscribers receive the Special as a bonus and find it a useful addition to their regular monthly digests, as demonstrated by feedback already received for the new edition: ‘This is great. So useful to have all these key contacts updated and in a single document’.
All new subscribers receive a copy: join the growing list of Informed Scotland subscribers and stay well informed. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.
Seven years ago we published the first edition of Informed Scotland.
Remember 2012, when
the talk was of Scotland’s 23.1% youth unemployment, the merger of 37 further
education colleges, and Curriculum for Excellence and the move from Standard
Grades to new Nationals? Now youth unemployment is down to 6.6%, there are 26
colleges… and, okay, we’re still talking about Curriculum for Excellence and
qualifications!
Today’s hot topics include challenging issues not regularly discussed back then, like mental health & wellbeing, or non-existent, like Brexit.
On mental health there were signs of things to come, with Education Scotland’s Communities Team publishing Learning is good for your health in May 2012, and a new national strategy for health & wellbeing in schools under development.
There was no hint of Brexit in issue 1 however. The main item on the EU was a Scottish Government announcement of £25m of European Structural Funding for projects to support getting young people into work. Perhaps had we lauded, rather than taken for granted, this type of regular, significant intervention, we would have avoided the major challenges created by Brexit today.
Back to the present, and May 2019 was the month for a plethora of must-read reports, including:
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.
The annual exam season began for schools, colleges and universities. A Reform Scotland report focused on the number of National Qualifications a student can take at S4. And SCQF Partnership encouraged employers to become ‘inclusive recruiters’ by using SCQF levels instead of specific qualifications in their recruitment processes.
Other items to highlight include:
Scottish Funding Council’s first statistical report on the articulation of HNC/HND students from colleges to universities
Finally, a quick mention with thanks to Edinburgh graphic designers, Mamook, who created the original Informed Scotland design and template – as you may have noticed they’ve provided a few new snazzy cover designs over the last year, and this issue features the final one. We hope you like them as much as we do!
This really is just a taste of all that happened last month! To keep on top of developments you need to become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.
As well as the
annual round-up of statistics, including on college staffing and higher
education students, qualifiers and retention rates, interesting items to highlight
include:
This really is just a taste of all that happened last month! To keep on top of developments you need to become an Informed Scotland subscriber. Email [email protected] to request a sample copy.
There was no shortage of learning and skills activity in blink-and-you-missed-it February. A range of hot topics, familiar and new, presented themselves across the landscape.
Inclusion was referenced in all sectors:
There is a new SCQF Inclusive Recruiter campaign; a new Creative Scotland Create:Inclusion Fund; a new HUB for SUCCESS offering support to care experienced young people in Edinburgh; and a new Prince’s Trust project to develop digital skills for unemployed and underemployed 16–30 year-olds across the UK backed by Google.org.
And look out for affordable coworking spaces opening up in libraries across the country, thanks to SLIC’s imaginative new Scottish Coworking Network. Take it from one who knows: coworking is to be recommended for micro-businesses, freelancers or start-ups – it absolutely creates opportunities for cross-fertilisation of learning and ideas!
Brexit made its way onto the cover of Informed Scotland for only the second time. There is much evidence of its increasing influence on the economy, business, employment and skills, with words and phrases like ‘gloomy’, ‘uncertainty and confusion’ and ‘threat’ littering forecasts.
The further and higher education sector is raising alarms and preparing for Brexit’s potential impact. The Scottish Funding Council published EU Exit and Scottish colleges and universities and added an EU Exit section to its website, while university bodies including Universities UK and the Russell Group, which is Chaired by the Principal & Vice-Chancellor of University of Glasgow, wrote a strongly worded open letter to MPs.
But there was plenty more learning & skills activity to fill this bumper double issue!
As well as the usual numerous statistical reports and annual reviews, other items to highlight include:
The sixth annual Informed Scotland Learning & Skills Hottest Topics list, plus a round-up of last year’s activity, is in an Annex to the digest. There’s also a link to an interview for Radio EDUtalk in January, when Angela Gardner and David Noble explored the stories behind the list, and looked at what’s on the horizon for 2019 (highlights here).
Our monthly intelligence digest of Scottish Learning and Skills
“I find Informed Scotland incredibly useful for keeping up to date about issues. It very much delivers what it sets out to achieve – ensuring people are informed about updates that matter to them in an accessible and concise a way as possible.”
“Informed Scotland has become a well-established element of our monitoring role for education and skills policy across the UK. It is one of the few publications that manages to combine a high quality overview of the education, skills, business and labour market information for a nation. There is an understanding of the relationships between these factors that is rarely recognised or captured in such a succinct way. A vital read for all who operate or who aspire to operate in this sector.”
– Patrick Craven, Director of Quality, Policy & Stakeholder Engagement, City & Guilds
“Excellent publication which enables us to keep well briefed and informed on all important education, business and skills updates! I can’t recommend it enough!”
– Natalie Phillips, Sustainable Communities Development Manager, Clyde Gateway
“Always find something of interest in Informed Scotland – either recent reports or the people moving into new roles.”
