I welcome the opportunity to give an opening statement on the 2017-18 draft budget. Education is the Government’s defining mission: our priorities are that we ensure that our children and young people get the best possible start in life, that we raise standards in schools and that we close the education attainment gap. The budget focuses on those areas and reflects the strength of our overall commitment.
The United Kingdom Government’s approach to public spending has provided a challenging context for our spending plans. Despite that background, our overall national investment in education and skills will increase by £170 million this coming year.
We will continue to invest in early learning and childcare as we work towards delivering the increased entitlement of 1,140 hours a year by the end of this parliamentary session. The budget will deliver an initial £60 million to support the first phase of workforce and infrastructure development that is needed to support that ambition.
We are closing the attainment gap through increased targeted investment in schools. The budget will deliver £120 million in 2017-18 for schools to invest in ways that evidence tells them will close the attainment gap. That is £20 million more than was previously announced, and it is funded from Scottish Government resources. The £120 million pupil equity fund will provide schools across the country with an allocation of around £1,200 for every pupil in primary 1 to secondary 3 who is known to meet the national criteria for eligibility for free school meals. That is on top of the existing £50 million per annum that is already provided to deliver targeted support to authorities and schools in areas in which there is greatest need.
In 2017-18, we will, for the sixth year in succession, invest more than £1 billion in higher education. That budget allocation will protect core teaching and research grants. We will also continue to make good progress on our ambition to widen access to university for young people from the most deprived communities. We announced the new commissioner for fair access to higher education on 16 December—he is the renowned educationist Professor Peter Scott. We will continue to protect free university tuition for all eligible undergraduates. Capital investment will increase by 77 per cent to support research and infrastructure investment and to ensure continued investment in excellent learning environments for our students. That investment will support our universities to remain internationally competitive, and to continue to be renowned for their research excellence, and it will ensure that access to higher education continues to be based on ability to learn and not on ability to pay.
We have invested more than £6 billion in further education resource and capital in colleges since 2007. We maintained college funding in 2016-17 and have increased it by 5.9 per cent in real terms in the 2017-18 budget. That increase in our investment in Scotland’s colleges will help them to generate opportunities for young people to improve their life chances, and to generate the skilled workforce that is needed for us to secure economic growth. We will continue to maintain at least 116,000 full-time-equivalent college places in order to equip students with the skills to take them on to positive destinations in education and employment. We have increased college capital funding by £20.4 million. That increased investment will, among other things, allow work to begin on a new campus in Falkirk for the Forth Valley College.
We are investing in modern apprenticeships by increasing the number of MA starts this year as a step towards having 30,000 starts by 2020. We will also establish a new flexible workforce development fund for the training that is needed to support inclusive economic growth. The budget will deliver £221 million to interventions that support skills, training and employment, thereby matching the funding that is transferred as a result of the United Kingdom Government’s apprenticeship levy. That funding includes an additional £8 million for modern apprenticeships.
I look forward to addressing the committee’s comments.