Education is the Government’s defining mission. Our priorities are to ensure that our children and young people get the best possible start in life, to raise standards in our schools and to close the educational attainment gap. We are committed to ensuring that every young person can access a positive and beneficial learning journey that will provide them with the right range of skills and qualifications to succeed in life.
One of our key ambitions is to widen access to further and higher education, as well as to create greater flexibility across the senior school phase and into higher, further and vocational education, which will create more high-quality opportunities for every child to succeed. I am heartened to see the recent Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council college statistics, which show that, in 2015-16, more than 41 per cent of all full-time college activity was in higher education, which is the highest proportion ever.
As outlined in my submission of 18 January, since the committee previously discussed today’s two reports, we have published a draft budget for 2017-18; indeed, Parliament will vote on the Budget (Scotland) Bill at stage 1 in proceedings today. Despite the challenging context that the United Kingdom Government’s approach to public spending has created, we have increased college funding—resource and capital—by £41.4 million, which is a 5.9 per cent increase. That increase in our investment in Scotland’s colleges will help them to continue to improve young people’s life chances and generate the skilled workforce that is needed to secure economic growth. We will also maintain at least 116,000 full-time-equivalent college places, which will equip students with the skills to take them on to positive destinations in education and employment.
Higher education has benefited from continued investment from the Government. For the sixth year in succession, we intend to provide more than £1 billion to the sector, which will protect core teaching and research grant investment. That level of funding also enables us to continue to make progress on our commitment to widening access, while protecting free tuition for all eligible Scottish and European Union students.
In our pre-budget discussions, we engaged closely with the higher education sector to identify areas of savings and income-generation opportunities. Our draft budget also identifies a 77 per cent increase in capital funding to support research infrastructure and to invest in excellent learning environments for students. That investment will support our universities to continue to be internationally competitive and renowned for their research excellence. It will also ensure that access to higher education continues to be based on the ability to learn, rather than the ability to pay.
In previous committee meetings, the number of Scotland-domiciled students who are being accepted for entry into Scottish universities has been of particular interest to members. The latest statistics from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service show that the number of Scottish students who were accepted to Scottish institutions increased by 2 per cent, to 33,825, over this academic year, with an increase of 1.1 per cent in entry rates for 18-year-olds from the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland.
I hope that that helps to set out the Government’s commitment to ensuring that our further and higher education sectors continue to make a pivotal contribution to the Scottish Government’s vision for excellence and equity within and across Scotland’s education system. I look forward to discussing the issues with the committee.