Meeting of the Parliament 12 January 2016
Ms Lamont knows as well as I do that the relationship between young people not being in positive destinations and their having a poor socioeconomic background is strong. Along with colleagues who work on the fair work, youth employment and skills portfolio, I have worked on moving towards more meaningful, real-time measurement of where individual young people are in terms of positive destinations. The Government is committed to opportunities for all and has led the way across the United Kingdom in ensuring that every 16 to 19-year-old in Scotland who requires a place in education and training is entitled to one.
The OECD noted that
“Scotland has an historic high regard for learning, education and teachers, and the trust it invests in teachers’ professional judgement is an admirable counterbalance to the trends in many systems”.
The quality of our teaching workforce and the excellence of our educational leadership provide the bedrock of our education system. The Scottish Government will continue to do all that we can to support and strengthen teacher professionalism. That is why we are investing in our teachers—in initial teacher education, professional learning and maintaining the numbers of teachers who work in our schools. It is also why we have worked with partners to embed the core ideas of the “Teaching Scotland’s Future” report and will continue to do so through a new strategic board for teacher education.