Scottish Budget 2021 to 2022

Chapter 8 Education and Skills

Portfolio Responsibilities

Improving the life chances of our children and young people through excellence and equity in education continues to be the principal mission of this government. Education and Skills portfolio invests in changing lives for the better and underpins key government priorities, in particular, promoting population wellbeing, tackling child poverty, and building sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

This budget, including funding delivered through the local government settlement, will therefore:

• Invest over £30 million to support our schools to mitigate the impacts of COVID on the learning experiences of our children and young people.
• Invest a further £59 million to deliver on our commitment to expand funded early learning and childcare from 600 hours to 1140 hours to all three and four year olds and eligible two year olds, bringing our additional annual revenue investment to £567 million.
• Work to deliver a statutory financial redress scheme for survivors of child abuse in care and to make advanced payments to elderly and ill survivors.
• Keep The Promise to implement the findings of the independent Care Review.
• invest over £60 million of additional resource and capital funding in universities and their students to support the development of well-educated, highly skilled people and securing world-class research and cutting edge innovation.

Ensuring the best start in life for every child is key to delivering our priorities, and a clear focus for our policies and spending plans is to continue to ensure every child will grow up loved, safe and respected so that they reach their maximum potential. In 2021-22 we will:

• work hard through the Scottish Attainment Challenge to accelerate and deepen recovery, and to focus on those who need it most, recognising that the equity audit has shown that COVID has had a negative impact on the attainment gap;
• incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into law; and
• deliver on our commitment to the expansion of early learning and childcare.

Our further and higher education sectors and skills provision priorities will also continue to support the development of well-educated, highly skilled people, supporting sustainable and inclusive growth and delivering our Young Person's Guarantee. In 2021‑22 we will:

• boost resources for our colleges to mitigate the effects of COVID, including the challenges of blended learning;
• maintain our links with Europe following the UK's exit from the EU and promote Scottish learning and research internationally through our Global Alumni Network and expansion of our Saltire Scholarship Programme;
• provide support for our world-leading university research to allow Higher Education Institutions to secure substantial additional funding from other research funders and strengthen international collaboration opportunities - including COVID research projects; and
• offer apprenticeship opportunities that are open to all by investing through Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to maximise apprenticeship starts.

*The Financial Transactions total presented here represents the 'net' portfolio position after adjusting for forecast Financial Transactions income. To see the 'gross' or total amount of financial transactions that will be spent by the portfolio in 2021-22, please see Annex A.

Education and Skills contributions to the National Outcomes

Primary National Outcomes

• Education
• Children and Young People

Secondary National Outcomes

• Poverty
• Economy
• Communities
• Fair Work & Business
• International
• Human Rights
• Health

For further information on the purpose of the portfolio budget, and contributions to national outcomes (including impacts of spend on equality of outcome) please refer to the relevant portfolio annex in the published Equalities and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement.