Meeting of the Parliament 25 October 2023
It is a pleasure to close the debate for Labour today. We brought today’s debate before Parliament because the stakes to get skills right have never been higher, and my colleagues Daniel Johnson, Martin Whitfield and Colin Smyth highlighted just how high—there are yawning skills gaps and shortages of apprentices; families are struggling to make ends meet; the economy is declining; and public services are starved of cash.
Although I recognise that both ministers offered to engage widely on reform, I am yet to be convinced that the pace of change is sufficient or that there is the necessary breadth of the vision to create and spread opportunity for all.
Spreading that opportunity starts with education. When education is valued and nourished, it creates and spreads opportunity all through life: in school, when we learn about the world around us; in college and university, where we learn to live and work in it; and in the workplace or our community, where we learn to apply it. The opportunities that education can bring are endless, and the skills that it builds are crucial.
I welcome the minister’s comments and those of others, including Brian Whittle, that the entire education system matters in relation to skills, but I remain disappointed that, at least until now, the area seems undervalued and deprioritised by this Government. Cuts are swathing, and inequality is holding back progress. Nowhere is that seen more obviously, as we have heard, than in science, technology, engineering and maths—skills that are widely recognised as the accelerating forces for future economic growth and to meet the challenges of tomorrow. It is also, consequently, where the well-paid jobs of the future lie.
To create a Scotland where opportunity is for all, we have to smash every glass and class ceiling that is in the way of pursuing those skills for the future. Economics, the law—and, yes, Jimmy Reid, as we have heard—all tell us why opportunity must do that. Yet, as Bob Doris, Maggie Chapman, Pam Gosal and other colleagues have noted, women and girls are underrepresented in those subjects and sectors and are routinely denied opportunities to build skills in them.
There are many reasons for that, but they start in the early years of children’s lives, when they get their first real exposure to the building blocks of skills that they will need, take an interest in and then excel at. As the Institute of Engineering and Technology reports, not focusing on STEM from an early age limits choices later in life, too, including for girls, and the data shows it. We know that girls are far more likely to study highers in art and design, French, fashion, food tech and childcare, and boys are more likely to study computing science, physics, engineering and graphic communication. We know that gender stereotypes continue into the workplace, as colleagues have said. Sixty per cent of people who work in care are women, yet women represent only 30 per cent of the STEM workforce. Of that number, 70 per cent leave, and only 12 per cent of the remaining women reach managerial levels. We have to use every opportunity to expose all young people to the broadest of skills, including in STEM, if we are to address skill shortages in key sectors and ensure that we take everyone with us.