3 A SMARTER SCOTLAND
We believe that people in Scotland can be provided with more opportunities to succeed.
We are ambitious about the part Scotland can play in a fast-changing global economy. We believe there is a great deal more we can do to exploit our advantages in knowledge and innovation and to tap into the potential talent available to us. We will ensure a smarter Scotland by expanding opportunities for Scots to succeed at every stage of life - from nurture through to life long learning - ensuring higher and more widely shared achievements for all.
Bringing about a smarter Scotland will, of course, help to ensure that people have better employment prospects and that, in turn, will strengthen our economy. Opening up opportunity to more people will also help to combat poverty and its associated problems, moving us toward a fairer and more inclusive society.
We believe that Scotland needs:
- A highly skilled, adaptable workforce with the knowledge and attitudes required for a growing, competitive economy;
- A healthy science and research base;
- Young people provided with the education needed to succeed; and
- Learning opportunities throughout life for all.
During our first 100 days in government, we have laid the foundations for a smarter Scotland:
- We published the consultation on the abolition of the graduate endowment fee for graduates;
- We started the process of driving down class sizes and providing access to a nursery teacher for all children, particularly in deprived areas, by providing funding for an extra 300 teachers from August 2007;
- We have created 250 more teacher training places from August 2007;
- We have increased entitlement to pre-school education from August 2007;
- We provided capital funding of £40m for school buildings to enable councils to plan investment from August 2007;
- We have ensured that asylum children who have been here for at least 3 years will have the same access as Scottish children to full-time further and higher education; and we are moving to improve access to nursery education for the children of asylum seekers; and
- We provided funding for a package of training, information and other support for foster and kinship carers.
In the year ahead, we will build on this progress and set in place relevant legislation and policy priorities to enable more Scots to succeed:
- We have already made clear our belief that access to further and higher education should be based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay. Therefore, in the autumn, we will introduce a Bill to abolish the Graduate Endowment Fee. This measure will immediately benefit around 50,000 students who will no longer be asked to pay almost £2,300 after graduation. Not only that, but each and every student studying at university in the years ahead will no longer be saddled with this burden. This is a major step towards our aim of tackling student and graduate debt;
- We will issue a consultation paper seeking the views of stakeholders about our policy to replace the current system of student loans with a fair and affordable system of means-tested grants. As part of this process we will seek the views of stakeholders on measures to tackle graduate debt;
- We will launch a consultation on those key policy areas supporting the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 Regulations. This will include retrospective checking, fees, determination procedures and definition of protected adults. In the first half of 2008 we will be consulting on the main Regulations themselves;
- We will consult on proposals to introduce a legislative presumption against the closure of rural schools; and
- We will introduce any legislation which is necessary to support a decision that the charitable status of colleges should be retained.
As well as legislative measures, we have a number of policy priorities this year that will help take us further down the road toward a smarter Scotland:
- We will progress our wider plans around student support in the context of the Strategic Spending Review;
- We will set out the details of our new Skills Strategy which, as well as contributing to our effort to build a wealthier and fairer Scotland, will contribute to our efforts to put success within reach of more and more Scots. Scotland needs both a skilled population and an economy and society that makes full and productive use of these skills. The strategy will address both the supply of skills (recognising the importance of developing skills at all levels), as well as the demand for skills (recognising the importance of employers that demand, value and make best use of their workforce's skills);
- We will develop our plans regarding the science and innovation strategy, developing a vision for supporting science to help support the economy, our people and our quality of life;
- We will support progress towards a modern Scottish curriculum fit for the 21st Century. Given its importance to the economy, science is being considered early in the ongoing review of curriculum materials and we look forward to the proposed release in the autumn of Learning and Teaching Scotland's science and numeracy work. Engaging with the profession, we will help ensure that the curriculum will deliver the right mix of opportunities for all our children, whatever path they choose to take. We believe that education today must begin to focus more on personalising learning to enable children to fulfil their individual potential;
- We will begin working on the development of a long term and comprehensive early years strategy. We believe that a child's first few years are particularly important, even more so in communities where opportunities are limited by other factors, and this strategy will be aimed at giving every child in Scotland the best start in life;
- We will establish a pilot of free school meals for all primary 1 to 3 children in selected local authority areas; and
- We will ensure that vulnerable children and young people are enabled to aspire and achieve. We will implement positive policies to provide the right support at the right time to ensure improved outcomes for vulnerable families, children and young people at risk and families needing support. For example, our forthcoming fostering and kinship care strategy will focus on building the capacity and quality of foster care, as well as promoting the role of foster carers in supporting birth families to stay together. It will also ensure improved support for kinship carers to reflect their important role.
Together, this represents a comprehensive series of actions that will enable us to work with those within the children's services, young people and higher and further education systems - as well as others in Parliament and beyond - to fully develop the people and talent that we have in Scotland.