SCOTTISH Education Minister Helen Liddell yesterday launched a 10-point action plan setting out the Government's vision for lifelong education.
As exclusively revealed in The Herald yesterday, Opportunity Scotland aims to introduce a raft of measures by 2002 to encourage adults to continue to learn throughout their lives.
However, the Scottish Liberal Democrats accused Mrs Liddell of stealing their policies and said the plans would not work without adequate funding.
Key features of the blueprint include an investment of more than #100m to help an extra 42,000 students take part in further and higher education.
A Scottish University for Industry and a national system of Individual Learning Accounts for 100,000 people will be launched. There will also be a #6m pilot project to help up to 3000 unemployed and low-income part-time students to pay their fees as well as developing new courses.
Schools, libraries, and higher education institutions will be connected to a National Grid for Learning, and 15,000 young apprentice positions will be set up.
Speaking at a Cosla conference on lifelong learning in Stirlingshire, Mrs Liddell said: ''It has never been more important for people to continue learning in adulthood, no matter how much or how little they achieved at school.
''Adults need to develop and update their skills to thrive in the modern labour market. Opportunity Scotland presents our agenda for post-16 education and skills development in Scotland over the next few years. It sets out our vision of a society where every citizen has the right to access learning at any stage of their life.''
Scottish Liberal Democrat spokesman Donald Gorrie said: ''It is always good to see that Government Ministers have been reading our manifesto - some of the plans have been lifted directly from it. What is now needed is a conversion to our funding policies because these improvements simply cannot be achieved on present funding levels.''
Margaret Vaughan Page 21
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article