Education is crucial to our future

Delivering effective education is vital for Scotland's future - whether its basics like understanding how to stay safe, claim entitled benefits - or something more formal like helping children achieve their potential in our Primary and High schools, and in further education.

This is an area particularly close to my heart, as I explain here:

The new Peebles High School - a £26m ‪SNP Scottish Government investment

What The SNP will do

• A comprehensive and detailed National Improvement Framework for Eductiona in Scotland. The SNP will deliver the seven outcomes defined in the Framework.

• Continuing to deliver and improve outcomes for children and young adults - resulting in one of the best educated nations in Europe (see below).

• Maintain free university places, instead of loading for Scottish students with huge debt. (Labour recently increased charges to students in England by upto £9,535 a year.)

• Development of Best Start - the Scottish Government's strategic early learning and school age childcare plan for Scotland.

The threat from UK parties*

• Introduce the expensive and failed Academies system of schools privatisation;

• Load our young adults with huge student loan debt by introducing university fees.

* Based on what they have delivered to England​

What Independence will bring

• Building a New Scotland includes a comprehensive

  vision for Education and Lifelong Learning in an independent Scotland published by our Scottish Government. This includes expanding early learning and childcare; better funding for schools and universities; and a renewed focus on lifelong learning.

The Evidence

Investment in new schools

In 2019 the SNP Scottish Government announced a £2bn Learning Estate Investment Programme. For us this has meant significant investment in replacement High School infrastructure, in particular new and modern campuses for:

• Midlothian

  • Beeslack Community High School

  • Penicuik High School

• Scottish Borders

  • Galashiels Community Campus

  • Peebles High School.

    
    

Educational attainment

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) is a measure of educational attainment. Comparing Scotland with some of the best performing countries in Europe shows that under successive SNP Governments, people in Scotland have become top performers:

Under the SNP, investment in Higher Education Research and Development has consistently ranked highly internationally over the last 20 years – Scotland was first among the OECD countries for its Higher Education Research and Development (public and private) spend as a percentage of GDP in 2021 (0.98%), above 0.42% in the OECD, 0.64% in the UK, and 0.47% for EU27.

Student loans

Labour introduced Student Loans into the UK (including Scotland) in 1997, replacing a previous grant structure. The SNP Scottish Government abolished the Scottish "graduate endowment payment" and no tuition fees have been charged to undergraduates since it was abolished in 2007.

The impact on student debt levels between England, governed by British parties, and Scotland, where Education was the responsibility of SNP-run governments, is stark: