Scotland's Skills for Tomorrow

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 4:22 pm on 25 April 2001.

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Photo of Ian Jenkins Ian Jenkins Liberal Democrat 4:22, 25 April 2001

I agreed with the tone of Irene McGugan's remarks. Education is about more than training and passing examinations and we must remember that. When I started teaching, there was an old-fashioned phrase, "transfer training", which, I assume, meant that if someone's mind was trained as well as their hands, their skills could be transferred much more easily. We must get the basis right before we go on to the higher levels and talk about training for individual jobs.

I welcome the creation of the careers Scotland model and the clarification and focusing of the process of matching skills to needs. I welcome the fact that people are recognising the synergies that exist between education, enterprise, lifelong learning, schools, businesses, colleges and other training agencies.

In relation to the minister's statement, I should support the minister by saying that, even on a small scale, the concept of the redundancy support team works well. Members of the work force who were made redundant after the closure of Murray Allan of Innerleithen responded well. They were not trained in high-scale skills, but were given small-scale direction with a wee bit of training here and there. That has put people into jobs by giving them opportunities that were not there before.

Other things that the minister would approve of are being done in the Borders. The economic forum is working. The council, the enterprise company, the area tourist board and such bodies are working together and may start to involve the careers service more as well. The Borders economic forum is starting to perform labour-market surveys that will allow us to direct the training to provide the skills that are needed by business. We need to find out what is needed and work out how we can fit the training to that.

There is a desperate need in the Borders for new opportunities and for diversification. However, there are also opportunities in existing industries. The textile industry, even though it is being redrawn, needs highly skilled people. Tourism will not recover unless we have people with high-quality skills. Brian Monteith talked about the requirement for chefs. Other skills are needed to run proper tourism businesses and those skills can be acquired—information technology is relevant to the whole of our economy.

There is real evidence that the Executive's programmes are beginning to work in the Borders. A high proportion of school leavers go on to tertiary education; the proportion of those who are going to further education establishments is also high. There is evidence that people from other sources—including disabled people and people with learning difficulties, and from among the unemployed—all have more opportunities now, under the schemes that are in place. Scottish Enterprise Borders plans to have 315 young people starting skillseekers programmes this year. There are people doing Scottish vocational qualifications and modern apprenticeships. Targets that have been set in that regard have already been exceeded and the targets for the coming year are ambitious. Three hundred and seventy-five adults have started training under the training-for-work programme, which we must bring to fruition.

The situation of further education colleges in rural areas must be considered carefully, so that they can provide the relevant courses. The colleges must take on students in order to gain funds, yet fewer students are available to them than in other areas.

Will the minister please re-examine those apprenticeship schemes under which small businesses—small building firms, for example—have to send people away for the six-week units that are involved, but cannot afford to? There must be a more flexible structure for apprenticeships. If we can do the training properly, we add value to the lives of individuals, to the economy and to our communities.