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£1.8 million for skills projects
05/06/2009
Businesses, organisations and individuals across Scotland will benefit from funding for skills projects announced today.
Twelve college projects, which were selected by the Scottish Funding Council in partnership with Skills Development Scotland, will be provided with £1.8 million of funding from the Scottish Funding Council to look at new approaches to the effective use of skills in Scotland.
The Cabinet Secretary visited West Lothian College to hear more about their Business Improvement Techniques (BITs) project which received funding.
BITs aim is to increase productivity and business improvement by initiating a skills development process for 15 to 20 manufacturing organisations in the Food & Drink industry.
Announcing the 12 projects during a visit to West Lothian College, the Education and Lifelong Learning Secretary Fiona Hyslop said:
"We have the potential as a nation to do much more with the skills available to us. We have to unlock that potential and improve how skills interact with the other drivers of productivity, such as capital investment and innovation.
"However, if we are to create a more successful country, with opportunities for all to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth we need to make better use of our skills base.
"The Scottish Government is committed to helping people improve their skills and we invest billions of pounds each year in the lifelong learning system.
"Recognising the value of skills to performance, productivity and economic growth through funding and supporting learning is vitally important.
"Organisations and individuals will only reap the full benefits of skills investment when workplace environments fully enable staff to also use their skills effectively.
"The 12 projects being supported cover a wide range of activities, each of which has in common a common aim - to improve the effective use of skills in the workplace.
"Widening participation in learning is at the heart of this Government's commitment to reduce poverty and create a fairer Scotland."
Mark Batho, Chief Executive of the Scottish Funding Council, said:
"This is an important set of strategic investments by the Funding Council. They show how the SFC, working with a wide range of partners, can lever positive change into the way our college and university sectors contribute to the Scottish Government's agenda for sustainable economic growth.
"What today shows is that there is a real dynamic for innovation and cooperation within Scotland's colleges, universities and businesses. What we have been able to do through working closely with Skills Development Scotland is to draw this together and place our funding where it will achieve the greatest benefit for Scotland."
Damien Yeates, Chief Executive of Skills Development Scotland, said:
"Today is a very important step in Scotland as we strive to deliver real returns in terms of our skills investment.
"There is no doubt that Scotland performs well in relation to the attainment of skills qualifications, but historically this has not resulted in as strong an economic performance as we may be capable of achieving.
"That's why today's announcement is so significant -the funding will allow these projects to examine how best to utilise our skills and translate them into increased productivity to help us to emerge, much stronger, from the current economic downturn."
The skills strategy Skills for Scotland highlighted that Scotland has a relatively good record on skills qualifications but that has not translated as well as it could into enhanced economic performance. In it strategy the Scottish Government therefore commits to improve how skills are used in the workplace.
The project forms part of wider activities led by the Skills Utilisation Leadership Group to champion the more effective use of skills in the workplace. The Leadership Group, which Fiona Hyslop chairs, includes business and trade union leaders and representatives from the Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.
The following projects will benefit from the funding:
- Forth Valley College: MA2MA: Chemical, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering - This project will develop a vocational degree route from modern apprenticeship level to a Masters. The project requires close collaboration between college and a university as well as with the employer.
- Stevenson College: Working with Attitude - This project will address skills utilisation in the creative industries and in tourism and addresses mainly personal development and effectiveness in the workplace, which will also improve retention in the workplace.
- West Lothian College: Business Improvement Techniques - The project will embed a culture of business improvement in selected organisations, provide knowledge transfer and be used to raise the financial and other benefits of skills development.
- Barony College: Scottish Dairy Skills Initiative - The project will be a partnership between Barony College and the Scottish Dairy industry in rural south of Scotland. The strong industry buy-in in this project has the potential to create solution to the challenges that the industry in Scotland has identified, such as attracting and retaining staff through workforce development and skills utilisation.
- Barony College: Aquaculture work-based learning development - This project will develop a blended learning package for the aquaculture workforce, such as fish farm workers, divers and boat operators, hatchery employees, fish feed producers, transportation and processing plant workers.
- The Open University: Enhancing Skills Utilisation by Private and Public Social Care Providers - This project will develop activities to enhance skills utilisation by public, voluntary and private sector social care providers and support on-going employer engagement and recognition of employees' skills and experience.
- The Open University: Recognising and Enhancing Skills Acquired in the Engineering Workplace: From Modern Apprenticeships to BEng - The project will establish a work-based model of study that would enable employees who have been through the Modern Apprenticeship route, and other employees with HN awards, to validate and enhance their skills through a supported programme of study leading to the BEng and potentially to Chartered Engineer Status.
- Robert Gordon University-Aberdeen College: Maximising the impact of skills - The project will improve training for leadership and management in the oil and gas industry to encourage workplace innovation and more ambitious market strategies, and develop individuals to better use in the workplace the skills that they already have acquired in college or university.
- Glasgow School of Art: Creating cultures of innovation through creativity and design - The project will develop a learning and thinking tool for business leaders to create the capability for sustainable innovation. To achieve this, GSA intend to work collaboratively with industry leaders through the Institute of Directors in how creative thinking and design processes can be integrated in organisations to improve productivity in areas key to the future success of the business.
- Edinburgh's Telford College: Skills utilisation and college graduates - This project will find out why college graduates, once in employment, often struggle with progression in their careers. Better research in the area can help colleges to modify what and how they teach and to work more closely with employers on issues relating to progression, which are ultimately also about better skills utilisation or recognition of skills.
- Dundee College: Skills for the Life Science Industry - The project will create a strategy for sustainability by establishing a skills ecosystem for the Scottish Life Science industry where life science companies, colleges and universities will exist in a symbiotic relationship based on interdependency to help produce business success in generating innovation, growth and competitiveness.
- Dumfries and Galloway College: South of Scotland Knowledge Transfer Network - The project will involve college and universities working together in an innovative way to link their services and knowledge with business' skills development in a challenging rural environment.
Details of the individual awards to these institutions are currently being finalised by the Scottish Funding Council and will be available shortly.