Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2025
MSPs have described how they feel that Scotland’s skills system is failing too many young people and is holding back our economic growth. There is a need for a new partnership between education and industry, with better careers advice at its heart and clear, supported pathways from the classroom to the workplace. For too long, the system has lacked coherence, vision and investment.
I will begin by talking about colleges, which have a track record of linking education with industry, including through schemes such as the flexible workforce development fund. However, instead of colleges being empowered, they have been placed under limitations. I can remember when college reorganisation was pushed through without the funding that was needed to make it work. That reorganisation should have strengthened partnerships but instead narrowed access by placing restrictions on the broad and inclusive approach where colleges partnered closely with business and communities. As Alex Rowley said, more recent funding changes have also had a negative impact. The consequences have been predictable. Opportunities have been lost, partnerships have been weakened and too many young people fall through the cracks, as James Withers showed in his review.
Our colleges are striving to deliver for their learners and local employers, despite the financial environment that they face. Following yesterday’s announcement about the Mossmorran plant, Fife College was swift to engage with Scottish Government officials on its preparations to support affected workers. Many of those working at the plant are Fife College students and graduates.
The college partners with more than 180 employers, including Babcock and RES Group, and delivers one of Scotland’s largest modern apprenticeship programmes. Its new Carnegie campus is ideally placed to deepen those links, especially with the high schools that it has on its doorstep. Elsewhere in Fife, at Levenmouth academy, we have seen the value of co-location. Young people there are able to get hands-on experience of working on real community projects and they gain an early understanding of the practical skills that local industries need. That is the kind of partnership that we need to see more of, but it cannot be left to chance.
We need to address the failure to deliver the requested number of apprenticeships, which is leaving young people without the routes to employment and opportunities that they need, and leaving employers without the people that they need to plug the skills gaps that persist across our economy.
In our schools, careers advice must start earlier and be more ambitious. We know that children, even in primary school, begin to rule out jobs on the basis not of their ability but of their confidence; that might be because of stereotyping or because they simply do not see people like them in certain roles.
Parents need support, too. I meet too many parents who worry that their children lack a plan or who default to the assumption that university is the only route. Good advice can open doors to opportunities that they did not know existed.
We must be honest, as others have said, that, too often, careers advice is still gendered. Far too many girls are steered away from science, engineering and construction. Women who succeed in those fields are often framed as succeeding despite the barriers, when our job is to remove those barriers. That must be reflected in our classrooms, in our careers services and in the workplaces that young people are stepping into.
When we create links between education and industry, it must be with the goal of helping all young people to find the right route for them. Part of that should involve working to close the disability employment gap, but we have to build such an approach into our skills and pathway systems, rather than bolting it on at the end. Scotland cannot afford to waste talent, and we cannot keep relying on a fragmented skills system that leaves too many young people behind and leaves many employers without the workers that they need.
We need to pursue a vision for a flexible, lifelong skills system that recognises and supports the role of our schools and colleges, makes apprenticeships more responsive and builds genuine partnerships with employers so that Scotland’s workforce matches Scotland’s economic needs. That is how we raise productivity, close the skills gap and give every young person the chance they need to reach their full potential.
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