Meeting of the Parliament 25 October 2023
We will support the Labour motion, but I give credit to the minister following the Withers review. He has engaged in a positive fashion, and the omens are good for a good policy in the future.
However, the Government’s recent record on skills has not been positive. To be frank, the previous minister did not seem to be too interested in the whole area. We have been waiting for more than five years for skills landscape reform, but the then minister acted only after he was criticised by Audit Scotland for a lack of leadership. Although we have the Withers review, we do not have the Government’s formal official response, so it could be even longer from the initial start point when the landscape review was supposed to be undertaken before we get any change.
The world is changing fast. We are going through a new green industrial revolution. While we wait a long time for the reforms to come, the world is moving on, and I fear the consequences of that.
It would be wrong not to mention colleges today, especially following this week’s report from the Fraser of Allander Institute, which said that college graduates will boost the economy by £52 billion over their working lives. Shona Struthers was right when she said this week that that report
“quantifies the huge return on investment”
from Scottish colleges. However, the crucial bit is that she was puzzled that there
“isn’t a decisive move to invest more, and gain more”.
She said that
“in fact, investment is falling sharply”.
In other words, the college sector delivers billions and could deliver more, but the Government is cutting millions. The symptoms of that are strikes, the threat of compulsory redundancies and the loss of opportunity for potential students. We need to invest in the college sector if we are to get the proper return that has been promised.
There is much to commend in the Withers review. It brings clarity for employers, training providers and students about roles and responsibilities, and it gives intelligent control over how the money is spent.
For students, there is a new careers service, which the minister thinks is a central piece of the Withers review, to be led by the newly reformed Skills Development Scotland. The aim would be to cover not only those who choose a non-university career trajectory but those who go into higher education, so that everybody gets the best advice.
For employers, there is better, clear advice from a single source through Scottish Enterprise, which is long overdue. There would also be more systematic involvement of employers in skills planning.
For everyone, there is a single source of funding that brings together education and skills under national and regional planning to set out immediate and future skills needs. There would be parity of esteem to use the Scottish credit and qualifications framework much more effectively.
There are questions about the role of the employers group—the Scottish apprenticeship advisory board—which I will meet tomorrow. However, the devil will be in the detail of subsequent decisions on policy and funding.
Simplification can sometimes mean a lack of sophistication, with some losing out. For example, although it does not quite state this, the Withers review implies that the flexible workforce development fund should end and be brought under the main central funding arrangements. As Murdo Fraser highlighted, some employers might lose out as a result of that simplification and lack of sophistication. We therefore need to ensure that the new system takes account of all those needs.
Bringing together funding for higher education, further education and skills will mean little if there is not a transfer of funds between those different functions. However, that transfer will be fought fiercely by those who are defending already-shrinking budgets. We must address the simplification on that front, too.
Those matters are difficult, but we must have such discussions—with much more time—if the reformed skills landscape is to be fit for the future.