How do we deliver the future skills Scotland needs?

The immigration system needs to be restructured to help meet Scotland’s skills gaps, according to the further and higher education minister.

Ben Macpherson, who was speaking at a Holyrood and Open University in Scotland fringe event at the SNP’s conference in Aberdeen, said the low level of unemployment and current restraints on immigration was creating economic challenges.

He said Scottish ministers would continue engaging with the UK Government on that, adding: “There are lots of ways in which the immigration system could be restructured to allow us to have a tailored migration system for Scotland.”

On devolved matters, partnership and collaboration between all the different parts of the skills landscape was highlighted as key to delivering for the future.

Macpherson said he was keen to work across sectors and businesses to “achieve maximum success” – and also pledged to work with other political parties in the Scottish Parliament to reach that goal.

He pointed to the changes in the economy, both happening now and those in the future, saying that getting the skills system right would ensure Scotland benefits as much as possible. There is “really significant investment” coming into the country as part of the move to a net zero economy, “but we need to build capacity to maximise the potential,” he said.

There are “a lot of challenges”, the minister continued, but also “a huge amount of opportunity”.

Martin Boyle, the director of the Open University in Scotland, agreed. He called for collaboration across universities, colleges, businesses and government to deliver that opportunity, turning the ambition set out in the Withers review into tangible impacts.

The Withers review, delivered by James Withers back in 2023, was commissioned by the Scottish Government to take a holistic look at Scotland’s skills landscape.

It called for major structural reforms in how skills development and lifelong learning is delivered to ensure Scotland keeps up with the coming economic transformation.

Boyle added that it was important to “train the person, rather than the job”, highlighting how crucial it was for workers to be resilient, innovative and able to “flex as industry changes”.

There was also a great deal of discussion about the role of colleges and schools, with Macpherson backing a more “consistent” careers service to ensure more young people received better advice.

Clare Adamson MSP said schools and even parents needed to “open up a bit more” about the different opportunities, acknowledging that it can be difficult to imagine a job you don’t yet know about.

She urged industry to reach out and engage so schools so children know what’s out there.

Macpherson, who came into the job just days before two critical reports of college cuts were published, accepted there were “challenges” in the sector but added they were an “important part of how we reach our potential”.

Last month, the Scottish Funding Council warned many colleges faced unsustainable losses, but cuts to balance the books would impact the quality of courses and staff numbers.

And at the start of this month, Audit Scotland similarly warned of an “extremely difficult financial landscape” after a 20 per cent real-terms funding cut over the course of this parliament.

Macpherson said ministers would “collectively work” to tackle the issues raised in both reports, adding: “I want to be absolutely clear that for me, the colleges are such an important aspect to the realisation of the potential that we have, they’re anchored in communities, they’re often organisations that enable people to have the chance that they, for whatever reason, didn’t have earlier in life to be able to go onto new opportunities, whether that’s further education or in the workplace.”