Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill - Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) Record

What might prevent the desired outcomes being achieved?

The aim of the Bill is to simplify the post-school funding landscape by reducing the number of funding bodies in this space. This will be done by removing responsibility for funding and securing NTPs, apprenticeships and work-based learning, from SDS and instead creating new statutory functions for the funding and administration of these programmes and apprenticeships by the SFC (which already secures the provision of further and higher education through funding allocation).

There are some potential challenges that could affect achieving these outcomes as the Bill is implemented. These can be mitigated by:

• working to ensure changes to the responsibilities (and governance) of the SFC and SDS during the transition period do not disrupt service delivery to learners and employers;
• ensuring that the SFC has the capacity and capability to deliver the new functions conferred by the Bill;
• putting in place arrangements for an effective and timely transfer of staff, systems and data from SDS to the SFC;
• ensuring that relevant people and expertise are available in the Scottish Government, the SFC and SDS to support the changes; and
• establishing and maintaining regular engagement and consultation with education bodies, training providers, employers and others.

This can be achieved through effective transition and implementation planning.