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Improving Scotland's skills base
26/02/2009
Fifty new modern apprenticeships are to be created in Scotland's creative industries in 2009-10, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Fiona Hyslop, announced today.
The places will help address skills needs in the performing arts, music, cultural heritage, literature and visual arts and enable Scotland to continue to build on its strong reputation within these industries.
In total, the Scottish Government has plans to have 50,000 people to be in work-related training by 2011.
Ms Hyslop said:
"The creative industries are one of Scotland's key economic sectors and will play an important part in contributing to our future economic recovery and positioning Scotland for future growth. Earlier this month, I was delighted to announce an investment of £5.8 million over five years in Skillset's Screen and Media Academies, helping boost our position as a world-leader in the creative industries.
"Today, I can announce that as part of our commitment to investing in high quality skills and training within that sector, we will be creating an additional 50 MAs in these areas during 2009-10. This will help address skills needs and ensure that the future workforce is fully geared up for economic recovery when the time comes."
Ms Hyslop announced the MAs during a Parliamentary statement on progress to improve skills in Scotland since publication of the Skills Strategy in September 2007. This includes:
- Working to improve the way learning is funded, for example by refocusing the Individual Learning Account so that for the first time it can be used for workplace learning and opening up higher education to a broader range of learners through the ILA 500, a grant which replaces loans for part-time students and has already resulted in 15,000 applications for support
- Offering better support for young people for whom school may not be the best learning setting, by providing them with a range of new positive options through the 16+ Learning programme, with the aim of guaranteeing that all young people have the option to access employment or training as an alternative to compulsory schooling until the age of 18
- Carrying out the first major survey of literacy and numeracy levels among adults since 1996 to create improved baseline information to inform future policies and ensure these better suit individual needs
- Working more closely with employers and acting on their advice to ensure Scotland's skills policies respond to their needs and needs of the economy. For example, we have listened to the tourism sector and are funding a study to look at creating a centre of excellence in hospitality and tourism, we are helping fund the development of proposals for an industry led Financial Services Skills Gateway and we will be working closely with employers, through the forthcoming apprenticeship summit, to decide how best to allocate the MA being funded from the Budget
In recent months and in response to the downturn, the Scottish Government has also introduced measures to help more people enter training, including further changes to Individual Learning Accounts (ILA 200 and ILA 500) to provide more choice on where and what to learn and allocating £7 million to enable colleges, through the Partnership for Continuing Employment (PACE) to provide retraining for those affected by large scale redundancies.
Ms Hyslop said:
"Since September 2007, we have been reforming the way learning is delivered and funded, from launching an early years' framework that recognises the need for every child to have a strong start in life to introducing £500 grants to replace loans for part-time higher education students and encourage more people, particularly mature students, back into learning.
"Clearly, the economic climate has changed considerably since 2007, making the need for a strong and effective skills policy all the more valid and why have been introducing a range of new measures to address the skills needs of those who face losing their jobs due to the downturn.
"We have been improving the PACE programme to ensure it is as effective as it can be in offering help with retraining, including creating a national helpline and a revamped website to connect individuals and companies to local PACE groups. We have also tasked 80 SDS staff to work alongside Jobcentre Plus staff to create a seamless service between skills development and employability support and have allocated £7 million to help colleges work with PACE to respond to the training needs of those who have been made redundant.
"Following the recent PACE summit, we are also looking at what further changes are required in the challenging months ahead to ensure that our people and our industries are equipped with the skills they need to support economic recovery."
As part of the Budget Bill approved by Parliament last month, Ministers announced that they will allocate an additional £16 million in 2009-10 to increase the number of new starts on MAs to 18,500 in that year. The 50 additional places announced today will be funded from that.
The Scottish Government has made clear that it will be guaranteeing continued training for apprentices who lose their job due to the current downturn. We will be working with all the relevant organisations to ensure that everything possible is done to find alternative employment to enable them to complete their MA. Where that is not possible, we will ensure they are able to complete alternative, relevant training.
Detailed information on the progress made by the Scottish Government and its partners to improve skills since the publication of the skills strategy is available on the Scottish Government website.
This includes case studies of learners and how they were helped to access the right courses to get into their chosen career. They include Levis Albano, a 21 year-old rapper and music producer from Glasgow and Tim and Elizabeth Longley, a retired couple from Morayshire who used Individual Learning Account funding so that they could train to teach English to people from overseas.
During the past few months, the Scottish Government has announced initiatives to further support people seeking to develop news skills and access training due to the economic downturn. These include:
- Improving the help available through PACE to people who face losing their jobs by creating a national helpline, 0808 100 1855, launched on February 2, 2009, to connect individuals and companies to local PACE groups, alongside a revamped website to give better information about what support is available from each of the agencies involved
- Tasking 80 SDS staff to work alongside Jobcentre Plus to create a seamless service between skills development and employability support and minimise the time people affected by redundancy are out of work. A range of Integrated Employment and Skills Service pilots between SDS and Jobcentre Plus have now been put in place, including one launched in Port Glasgow by Ms Hyslop and Tony McNulty on February 9, 2009.
- Allocating £7 million through the Scottish Funding Council to help colleges work with PACE to respond to the training needs of those who have been made redundant
- Improvements to financial support for part-time students, including changes to Individual Learning Accounts (ILA 200 and ILA 500) to give individuals more choices on where and what to learn and plans for the for the first time to introduce funding for up to 150 part-time post-graduate students on a pilot basis during session 2009-10