Informed Scotland April 2024 – Financial challenges for learning & skills

With political uncertainty across the UK, plus funding challenges and the Easter break, April was the quietest month for a while for learning and skills.

The impact of financial pressures can be seen right across the landscape, most clearly in some of the hard decisions taken recently.

Such as removing the Upskilling Fund for universities, a casualty of the Scottish Funding Council’s ‘difficult choices’ with university funding allocations. Skills Development Scotland’s update that there will be no Individual Training Accounts money available for 2024/25. And the John Muir Trust’s worrying pause in the John Muir Award due to ‘a serious financial deficit’.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Interesting and somewhat more upbeat items to look out for include:

• Findings from an Open University survey of employers’ views of young people in the workplace
• Enginuity’s STEM Skills in Scotland, the first report in a three-phase research project
• The Design Council’s insights into The green design skills gap
• A refreshed SDS Skills Investment Plan for the historic environment sector, developed with Historic Environment Scotland
• HM Inspectorate of Education’s planned review of school inspections
• Development of a new Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework for Scotland by partners including the SFC, QAA Scotland, College Development Network and Education Scotland
• Plus Digital Schools Awards Scotland’s new Digital Award for early learning & childcare settings, supported by Education Scotland.

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