Post-school education and skills reform legislation: consultation

Chapter 1: Introduction

The overarching objectives of the post-school reform programme are set out in the Purpose and Principles for Post-School Education, Research and Skills:

Purpose:

To develop new thinking, products and systems through research and to ensure that people, at every stage in life, have the opportunity and means to develop the skills, knowledge, values and attributes to fulfil their potential and to make a meaningful contribution to society.

Principles:

Transparent, Resilient and Trusted: The system is financially and environmentally resilient; trusted to deliver, and subject to effective governance.

Supportive and Equitable: People are supported throughout their learning journey, particularly those who need it most.

High Quality: High quality opportunities are available for people to enhance their knowledge and skills at the time and place that is right for them.

Globally Respected: Research, teaching, innovation and knowledge exchange undertaken by Scotland, must make a difference; enhance and contribute to global wellbeing, addressing 21^st century challenges such as the climate emergency and attracting inward investment and talent to study, live and work in Scotland.

Agile and Responsive: Everybody in the system collaborates to deliver in the best interests of Scotland’s wellbeing economy.

Learner at the centre

The learner is at the centre of our reform programme. We want to make changes to help to remove or reduce the barriers to entry into, and participation in, post-school education. We want your help to test our proposals for change to make sure they work for those learners and potential learners facing the greatest barriers. We are particularly interested in hearing what learners have to say. Whilst a lot of the proposals affect the way things operate behind the scenes from a learner’s perspective, we need to know that our proposals will, or have the potential to, improve their experience.

We are interested in gathering data to help us assess the impact of our proposals across a range of criteria. We need to assess our proposals for their impact on fairness, equalities, human rights, children, data protection, island communities, business and the environment.

Progress to date

There are two cornerstones of this reform programme, both published in June 2023. Firstly, the Purpose and Principles for Post-School Education, Research and Skills (“the Purpose and Principles”) which sets the vision and objectives for the reform programme. These were developed through engagement with stakeholders across the whole education and skills system.

Secondly, James Withers’ Independent Review of the Skills Delivery Landscape (“the Withers Review”), which makes 15 recommendations for change in skills delivery. This includes reform of the functions of two of the principal public bodies which help run our post-school education and skills system, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council.

Public bodies are organisations that are directly accountable to the Scottish Government or Scottish Parliament. They can be executive agencies or non-departmental public bodies and may or may not be established in legislation. There are three principal public bodies which help to run our post-school education and skills system:

The Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) is an executive agency of the Scottish Government. SAAS helps higher education students find the right information, support and funding. SAAS assesses applications for tuition fees, loans, grants and bursaries for eligible Scottish students studying a course of higher education in the UK.

The Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, commonly known as the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), is a non-departmental public body which provides funding to colleges and universities and other bodies, holds them to account and publishes official statistics about colleges. It also funds higher education research.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) is a non-departmental public body that supports individuals to build their career and skills, targeting help at those who need it most. SDS works closely with employers and businesses.

There are other public bodies which also have a role to play.

The Purpose and Principles and the Withers Review ran concurrently and reached very similar conclusions. The final publication of the Purpose and Principles accepted the basis of many of the Withers’ Review recommendations. The Purpose and Principles: Initial Priorities outlines the actions to which we have committed as a first step towards delivering the vision and outcomes for the post-school system.

Alongside the Purpose and Principles sits a set of logic models showing the detailed outcomes we wish to achieve under each Principle. These logic models help to explain the reform programme.

The reform agenda builds on a wealth of research and evidence from previous reviews and stakeholder engagement, including:

• Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education by Professor Ken Muir, published March 2022, which recommended significant reform in education, including the creation of three new education bodies, and a national discussion to establish a compelling and consensual vision for the future of Scottish education.
• All Learners in Scotland Matter - national discussion on education: final report by Professors Carol Campbell and Alma Harris, published in May 2023, which set a vision, values, and a Call to Action for the future of Scottish education.
• It’s Our Future - Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment by Professor Louise Hayward, published in June 2023, included 26 far-reaching recommendations centred around the introduction of a Scottish Diploma of Achievement (SDA) with three mandatory elements: Programmes of Learning, Project Learning and Personal Pathway.

Recent reviews of the post-school system build on a range of reviews undertaken over the preceding five years for Scotland or the wider UK, some of the more significant of which are listed at Annex B: Previous reviews of the post-school system.

The Community Learning and Development (CLD): independent review concluded in June 2024 and the findings will be published in the summer. As its terms of reference note, the review of CLD considers the extent to which CLD is currently delivering desired outcomes and how it is placed to contribute towards the recommendations set out by Professor Ken Muir, Professor Louise Hayward and James Withers for developing an education and skills system that is fit for the future.

The case for change

We can improve the offer and outcomes for learners, employers and wider society. We want to make things even better, and simpler, for the learners and for employers who interact with our public bodies. We want to create a system that is fit for future demands and educates and trains our future workforce. We want learners to be able to navigate their way through the system to the right career for them.

We value our post-school education and skills system. The Scottish budget for 2024-25 allocated over £2.4 billion in investment to support our students, colleges, universities and training providers. But we are facing fiscal and economic challenges.

A growing set of social, technological, economic and environmental factors, coupled with the most challenging financial situation since devolution, mean that we need to reform the post-school education and skills system. The post-school education and skills system is not financially sustainable in its current form.

We will need to increase efficiency and productivity in order to live within our means. This means we need to maximise the impact of public spending, minimise duplication of effort and cost and help learners make the right decisions for them. Making the right decisions helps avoid, for example, needing to study for another qualification because the first one was not the right one for their career path. Making wrong decisions can be an expensive mistake for the learner, the economy and the taxpayer.

The post-school reform programme

The post-school reform programme is made up of a range of activities, taking forward different aspects of reform. These activities have to go at different speeds because some of them depend on outputs from others. Furthermore, making change requires people, time and money, and the Scottish Government, public bodies and institutions need to prioritise. This consultation is about changes to legislation that need to be taken forward now.

What this consultation is asking about

This consultation is asking about proposals to change what SAAS, SFC and SDS do. (They are the three principal public bodies in the post-school system.)

The effect of these changes would be to bring funding for learner support into one place, and funding for apprenticeships together into one place, as set out in Minister for Higher and Further Education’s statement to the Scottish Parliament on 5 December 2023. This could be within a single organisation (single funding body) or by changing the responsibilities of SAAS, SFC and SDS.

To make the proposed changes would require a Bill.

What is a Bill?

A Bill is a potential new law. In Scotland, Bills are examined and decided on by Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). If approved by the Scottish Parliament, a Bill becomes a new Act of the Scottish Parliament. This is called primary legislation. Primary legislation can give Ministers powers to make secondary legislation which can set out rules, regulations or procedures in much more detail.

We want to know your views on our proposals for the changes to the public bodies and the changes we need to make to primary legislation as a consequence.

Out of scope of the consultation

The benefits of the proposed changes will be realised through a number of other activities. We are not asking about those activities in this consultation.

The proposed changes should improve the way we provide for apprenticeships. We are developing a new approach to commissioning modern apprenticeship delivery and improving foundation, modern and graduate apprenticeships. We want to make sure that the apprenticeships on offer, and the way we deliver them, are focused and effective for learners and employers.

The proposed changes should improve the way we provide student support. By bringing all financial support funding for college and university students into one place, it will help to make it fairer and easier to navigate for students.

The proposed changes should also help us to develop a new funding model for post-school education provision, as set out in Programme for Government (September 2023). A new model could also help improve the accessibility, fairness and transparency of funding for learners, providers and employers.

The potential benefits are set out briefly in Chapter 2 of this consultation.

We are also taking forward work in the following areas (which are not the subject of this consultation):

• careers improvement – to develop a clearer, more coherent focus for our national careers service to the benefit of learners and employers;
• community learning and development – considering and responding to the review recommendations;
• employer engagement – putting employer views at the heart of our education and skills system, particularly in skills planning, national strategy, qualifications, careers, and development of the post-school learning system;
• institutional governance – ensuring that the right governance structures and mechanisms are in place for our colleges and universities and removing any barriers to collaboration and innovation;
• qualifications – review post-school qualifications to build a comprehensive understanding of the post-school qualifications landscape to support wider reform and better outcomes for learners; and
• skills planning – establishing a national skills planning approach led by the Scottish Government, recognising the need to be clear about national strategic skills requirements, enabling the education and skills system to become more responsive to strategic priorities, and to strengthen regional skills planning approaches to achieve the same at local levels.

Continuous improvement

The reform programme and change will happen at the same time as business as usual. Business as usual for the Scottish Government, public bodies and institutions means providing education and training to students, learners and apprentices and ensuring the support is there for them at every stage, from first applying to qualifying and moving on. But business as usual does not mean carrying on doing exactly the same thing as before. It also provides opportunities for continuous improvement, which complements the work of the reform programme. Examples of this continuous improvement include:

• recent changes to improve the student support packages for undergraduate and postgraduate students from the 2024-25 academic year onwards, including introduction of: a £2,400 Special Support Loan for the purpose of covering study, travel and childcare costs (which does not affect entitlement to benefits); and a monthly payment option for undergraduate students to help them budget over the summer months;
• our commitment to Keeping the Promise, which is why we introduced the Care Experienced Bursary, now available to students across further and higher education and worth £9,000;
• reviewing the support available to those studying part-time or flexibly, giving due consideration on how best to build up an appropriate evidence base, including stakeholder engagement and utilising the findings from the Student Finance and Wellbeing Study relevant to part-time and distance learning students;
• the Community Learning and Development (CLD): independent review launched in December 2023 and which concluded in June 2024. This review examined the extent to which CLD is delivering positive outcomes for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable learners and marginalised groups;
• introduction of the Tripartite Alignment Group where Colleges Scotland, Scottish Funding Council and Scottish Government work together to identify and implement changes to current processes and models to ensure they work to support college delivery and help make colleges fit for the future; and
• improvements in the ways we track that the right outcomes are being delivered, the value we get from public money and the monitoring of risks and challenges.

How this consultation is organised

The consultation paper explores the following areas:

Chapter 2 sets out the options for changes to what the public bodies do. It sets out the potential consequential changes for their purposes and functions. Finally, it sets out the potential opportunities from bringing apprenticeship provision into one place and student support into one place.

Chapter 3 – sets out how SFC’s governance needs to evolve in response to the proposed expansion to its remit, in particular how it ensures that employers’ views inform decision making. This includes changes to the SFC Board.

Chapter 4 – asks about enhanced powers for SFC, not least so that it can get the right information from all the organisations it might fund to provide post-school education and skills training.

Timeline and next steps

After the consultation closes, all the responses will be independently analysed, together with information from the events, to produce a consultation report which will be published in autumn 2024. We will also set out the decisions we have made as a result.

We intend to legislate at the Scottish Parliament so that the law is changed before the end of this session in March 2026. It will be for an incoming administration in 2026 to determine when those changes should happen in practice. We anticipate some of the changes to be made in time for academic year 2026-27.