Scottish Budget - Annex A.5 - Education & Skills

20th December 2023

We are prioritising our budget towards our aim to ensure excellence and equity in education and skills, including reducing the poverty-related attainment gap and to support our wider national mission to tackle child poverty.

This portfolio's responsibilities include support for children and families plus early learning and childcare, school and post-school education. It is also responsible for the provision of skills programmes and for the funding of a number of important public bodies and agencies.

Our children, young people and learners of all ages continue to be a key priority for this Government. The Education and Skills portfolio invests in improving and changing lives for the better and underpins key government priorities, including the three missions of equality, opportunity and community.

We will maintain our commitment to invest £1 billion over the course of this parliament to tackle the poverty related attainment gap, with £200 million to be distributed in 2024-25. This long-term targeted investment improves outcomes for children and young people and helps break the cycle of poverty.

We will continue to provide £145.5 million to local authorities to maintain teachers in the system and enable councils to offer permanent contracts to our education workforce.

The next phase of our expansion of Free School Meals will be targeted in the first instance to children in primary 6 and 7 who are in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment, with £43 million of necessary capital investment to expand facilities and provision to begin during 2024-25.

We will invest £10 million capital in targeted device and connectivity provision for our most disadvantaged households with children. This will bring a range of benefits for families struggling with the cost of living crisis while also tackling digital exclusion amongst our most deprived learners.

Our continued investment in early learning and childcare (ELC) aims to ensure every child and young person has the opportunity to fulfil their potential. We will also ensure those delivering high-quality funded ELC in private, voluntary, and independent settings are paid at least £12 per hour.

We are steadfastly committed to keeping The Promise to Scotland's care-experienced children and young people. We will continue our delivery of the Whole Family Wellbeing programme, providing £50 million in investment in holistic family support across Children's Services Planning Partnerships and working with The Promise Scotland, other partners and potential investors to identify options for investment and disinvestment that support better outcomes.

We are taking action to support our colleges, universities and skills system with over £2.4 billion investment, including protecting the right to free tuition and driving forward our commitment to Widening Access. This will maintain Scotland’s reputation for world-leading research; provide opportunities for people to learn and develop their skills through further and higher education and apprenticeships and provide vital financial support to students to support them in completing their studies in the face of significant cost of living pressures.

Education & Skills Intended Contributions To The National Outcomes
Primary National Outcomes

Education
Children and Young People
Economy
Poverty
Secondary National Outcomes

Communities
Human Rights
Fair Work and Business
International
Culture

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 Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement.

For all the figures and tables go HERE