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Colleges to play key role in skills review
15/06/2007
Scotland's colleges will play a key role in how the Scottish government responds to the UK wide Leitch Review of Skills according to Education and Lifelong Learning Secretary Fiona Hyslop
Speaking at the annual Association of Scotland's Colleges Conference today the Cabinet Secretary said:
"We have already announced that we will be bringing forward our own Scottish Skills Strategy in response to the recommendations of the Review. It will be a Scottish Strategy for Scotland's distinctive needs.
"The evidence base of the Futureskills report published yesterday will inform our strategy but I know Scotland's colleges are ideally placed to play a central role in helping achieve our aims and ambitions of making Scotland's skills base truly world class.
"Developing the strategy will be a challenging task and one we need to work with others to achieve. The key contribution of Scotland's colleges will be to gear up school-college links, address literacy and numeracy demands, increase knowledge exchange, and provide training opportunities for all young people who can benefit.
"We may be in unchartered territory as a minority government but there is a new mood of optimism to grab the chance to change things. Scotland's colleges can take advantage of those opportunities and help us set out our ambitions for skills in a truly lifelong learning context from cradle to grave."
HM Treasury announced an independent UK review of skills led by Lord Sandy Leitch in 2004. The aims were to report back to the UK Government on what skills profile the UK should aim to achieve by 2020. The final report was published in December 2006.
Life Through Learning; Learning Through Life, the Scottish Executive's original Lifelong Learning Strategy for Scotland was published in February 2003. The Executive's consultation on an updated lifelong learning strategy ran from November 2006 to February 2007. One of the recommendations was for the Executive to develop a Skills Strategy.
The Scottish Skills Strategy is in part the Scottish government's response to the Leitch Review and to the implementation plan due to be launched shortly.