European and External Relations Committee, 30 Mar 2004
Meeting date: Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Official Report
117KB pdf
Scottish Executive (Scrutiny)
We move on to the next item, which is pre and post-council scrutiny. As members can see, the papers cover only two or three councils. I invite comments from members.
Paragraph 4 of annex B to the paper is headed:
"Next generation of education spending programmes (Socrates, Leonardo and Tempus)".
My knowledge of those programmes is pretty limited. On the Tempus Plus mobility programme, the paper states:
"The programme, which currently only involves higher education, will be broadened to involve schools, vocational training and adult learning."
It would be of interest to both this committee and the Education Committee to know how the programme will be broadened. It might be worth while for us to take some evidence on that, to see how we can take maximum advantage of it and encourage far more students at school and higher levels to get involved and take advantage of such programmes. I think that awareness of them in Scotland is pretty limited—it certainly is as far as I am concerned.
Are you suggesting that we should take up the matter, or do you simply want us to make the other relevant committees aware of it?
I would like to know more about those programmes, including the Erasmus programme, which is not mentioned in the paper, although I know that it is a higher education programme. I do not want to put the clerks to too much trouble, but I would certainly like to know more about them or at least be directed to websites from which I could find out more about them and how they are being broadened.
Okay. We will certainly get a background paper on that.
Two issues came to my attention when I read the paper, the first of which relates to the report on the education, youth and culture council meeting on 26 February. Paragraph 5 of the report is on the European year of education through sport. The report states:
"The Commissioner said that her services had so far agreed to support 74 projects worth EUR4.4 million from some 600 applicants. They have a further EUR 2.1 million"
to be allocated in due course. Given the current debate about sport in Scotland, perhaps we should try to find out how Scotland has fared with those projects. The issue might be of interest to the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on sports—I am taking advantage of Dennis Canavan's presence at the end of the table. Would members be happy to find out the extent to which Scotland has benefited?
Members indicated agreement.
The other issue that came to my attention relates to the environment council. There is a reference to the
"rapid implementation of the Environmental Technologies Action Plan".
Given the fact that waste management is currently high up the political agenda in Scotland, we may want to find out about the implications of that for Scotland, because we want to ensure that Scotland is in the vanguard in developing such technologies. I would certainly be interested in finding out about Scotland's input.
I hope that there is a misprint in the first paragraph of page 8, which refers to "efforts to … counter inclusion". I presume that it means efforts to counter exclusion.
Yes. Well spotted.