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Parties lay out stalls on education |
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Thursday, 26 April 2007 |
Labour, the SNP and the Conservatives went head to head last night at the Association of Scotland’s Colleges election hustings, where they defended their manifesto pledges on further and higher education, as well as skills academies.
Nicol Stephen, Minister for Lifelong Learning, who was down to speak
for the Liberal Democrats, was notably absent, leaving an empty chair
in the middle of the panel.
Deputy Minister for Lifelong Learning Allan Wilson said that Labour
wanted to create the best education system in the world by 2020 and
that “ambition was a virtue”. All of the £1.8bn allocated to Scotland
by Westminster would be channeled into education, whereas other parties
had different priorities, he said. He also said that investment in
colleges would be at double the rate of inflation for the years covered
by the upcoming Spending Review.
Derek Brownlee, the Tories’ finance spokesman, said that the
Conservatives did not want to make promises about the amount of money
that would go into education, because all parts of the public sector
made demands, and “it isn’t fair to raise hopes”. He reiterated the
Tories’ manifesto commitment to having a major education funding
review, and said that Scotland could not ignore what was happening
south of the border in terms of top-up fees.
SNP education spokeswoman Fiona Hyslop confirmed that the SNP was
totally opposed to the use of top-up fees, despite this pledge not
being included in the party manifesto. She also criticised the
Executive for bringing in “additional variable top-up fees” for English
students and medical students and said that, in contrast, the SNP would
treat English students the same as Scottish students.
However, Wilson said that, seeing as the SNP did not intend to write
off the debt of English students, this was a residency-based
qualification and could be open to challenge.
Hyslop stressed that her party’s proposals to write off student debt
and abolish the graduate endowment counted as “student welfare”
funding, and that this was entirely separate from the funding that
would go into colleges and universities.
Wilson slated the SNP’s plans to withdraw Scotland from UK Research
Councils, but Hyslop said that real research collaboration was global
and that this would continue whatever the constitutional settlement.
She said that independence would not be a “huge panacea” for education,
but that it would bring Scotland a sense of purpose as a nation.
Wilson said that money saved by the SNP from projects such as
cancelling the Edinburgh tram scheme and airport rail link would be
eaten up by the black hole in the party’s finances created by the Local
Income Tax, but Hyslop said this was “nonsense”.
Wilson and Hyslop disagreed on the effect of proposed skills academies.
Wilson said that the academies were largely aimed at “disaffected”
school children and that they were a “way to inspire children to take
up learning opportunities” but denied that there was any segregation of
pupils involved. Hyslop argued that pupils who were “disaffected” were
unlikely to be motivated, top-performing pupils.
She said that skills academies would be a new structure that would
bypass the college sector and that Scotland should be better using what
it already has in terms of schools and colleges rather than adding in
an extra tier. Much more could be done, she said, in terms of freeing
up time in schools for skills and trades, engaging SMEs with schools
and colleges, and forwarding a mentoring agenda.
Wilson said that one of the biggest postbags First Minister Jack
McConnell had ever had was when he announced proposals for a “Dad’s
Army” of older mentors in the trades to work with young people on
picking up skills.
Brownlee said that the Tories were “quite attracted” to the idea of
skills academies but said they needed to be piloted so that if they
were a failure, the government would not have gone up a “blind alley”.
On the issue of getting people above school leaving age, in particular
those who had been made redundant from other jobs, retrained in order
to participate in new industries, the speakers were divided.
Hyslop said a key issue was part-time workers trying to support a
family – in particular, she referred to women who had been made
redundant from Motorola and NEC jobs in West Lothian and needed to
learn new skills for employment. She said that the barriers needed to
be unblocked, and that there needed to be funding for retraining.
Wlson said that he had given money to Sector Skills Councils for three
different projects to determine how to attract older workers back into
learning. If Labour get in, he said that its proposed Full Employment
Agency would work on developing confidence and skills of those who had
become out of work.
Brownlee said that there was a case for people self-funding, and
borrowing money to do courses because they would make money back on
future earnings.
Stevenson College head Susan Bird warned on the creation of more
agencies, such as the Conservatives’ proposed Skills Agency, saying
that there was a need to learn lessons from all the different agencies
and networks that had existed in the past. She stressed that more
needed to be done about being creative and innovative with the skills
agenda.
Workforce planning was also a key issue that was identified, with Bird
saying that Scotland has a “timebomb” on its hands when it comes to the
care sector.
No one has commented on this article.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 April 2007 )
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