Meeting of the Parliament 20 January 2026 [Draft]
The minister is to be commended for getting this bill to stage 3, because, frankly, he inherited a guddle and is having to work his way through it. Trying to make something worth while out of this is very difficult, as Miles Briggs has alluded to this afternoon and on other occasions.
My amendment 11 is very basic, but it concerns a basic thing that is all too often missing from how Government approaches education and skills policy in Scotland, and that is outcomes. Amendment 11 would simply require that, in exercising their functions under the legislation, ministers must have regard to what public expenditure is actually achieving—a breakthrough moment! They would also have to
“ensure that funding supports measurable improvements in skills, productivity and learner achievement.”
It concerns not intentions, strategies or process, but actual outcomes. That matters, because, while Scotland already spends substantial sums across further education, higher education, apprenticeships and national training programmes, employers repeatedly tell us that the spend and the impact are drifting apart.
Productivity growth in Scotland has lagged behind the United Kingdom average for more than a decade. Skills shortages remain acute in engineering, construction, digital technology, life sciences and advanced manufacturing, and too many young people still struggle to see a clear, credible route from education into sustained employment.
The bill talks a great deal about duties, structures and governance. What it does not do is anchor ministerial decision making in whether those structures are actually delivering skills that the economy needs. Amendment 11 would close that gap.
That is not ideological. Colleges Scotland has made it clear that colleges already deliver strong value for money and contribute directly to productivity and learner outcomes. The organisation supports the amendment, precisely because it reflects what good providers already do when they focus on results, not rhetoric.
The same point is made in the Scottish Parliament information centre’s analysis ahead of stage 3, which highlights the importance of aligning the expanded remit of the Scottish Funding Council with economic need, not simply administrative consolidation.
Amendment 11 is about discipline and realism. Public money should work harder. If we are serious about ensuring parity of esteem between academic and vocational pathways, we must be serious about measuring whether funding is raising skill levels, improving completion rates and supporting progression into work, including through apprenticeships and graduate apprenticeships.
Graduate apprenticeships, or degree apprenticeships—I prefer the latter term because I think that it is a better description of what they are—are a good example. Where they work well, they deliver degree-level skills aligned directly with employer demand, with high completion and employment rates. However, uptake remains patchy and expansion has been inconsistent. Amendment 11 would give ministers a clear statutory prompt to ask whether their funding decisions are actually scaling what works.
I do not think that that should trouble the Government. If ministers are confident that the system that they are building will raise standards, boost productivity and properly equip Scotland’s future workforce, they should see writing that expectation into law as entirely reasonable—and, if I may say so, the minister who is guiding the bill is a very reasonable fellow, on a good day.
Members: Oh!