Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has increased investment in the college sector, with more than £750m allocated in the 2025-26 draft budget to support the delivery of high-quality education and training.

The £13.2m (2.1%) increase in the 2025-26 net college resource budget allocation includes funds of £4.5m to support the college lecturer pay settlement and funds to cover increased pension costs.

In addition to this, as negotiations progressed around the budget agreement, we have now agreed a proposal to invest a further £3.5m in targeted support for the College sector. This will be used to create an Offshore Wind Skills Programme and College Care Skill Programme, supporting a pipeline of skilled workers.

Colleges continue to deliver exceptional learning to students while driving forward reforms, and the Scottish Government and the SFC will continue to work closely with the sector to diversify funding opportunities and deliver more flexible funding arrangements.

The Scottish Funding Council will now work closely with the college sector to identify the best split of the available resources, taking into account Government priorities and the college sector’s needs.

Colleges are responsible for their own operational decisions, including course provision, as they are best placed to respond flexibly to emerging trends at local and regional level.

The Scottish Government has had no direct engagement with Ayrshire College on the 2025-26 budget.

With the publication of the 2025-26 budget, it is now the role of the Scottish Funding Council to engage closely with colleges to identify the best split of available resources, taking into account Government priorities and the needs of the college sector.

We have recently made available £5m per annum capital budget over 4 years to fund the extension of the public water network to enable the removal of Private Water Supplies which should improve resilience to affected water supplies during power outages. Milton of Cushnie in Aberdeenshire has been shortlisted as one of the communities who will benefit from this funding.

The Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) published in December 2022, provides guidance on long term investment in Scotland’s strategic transport network. STPR2 recommends future investment to ensure that Scotland’s trunk road network remains safe (Recommendation 30), adapted to deal with the impacts of climate change (Recommendation 31) and resilient (Recommendation 32).

Recommendation 31 provides a basis for identifying, prioritising and implementing transport infrastructure improvements. Measures could include but are not limited to strengthening or replacing sea walls, upgrading coastal fences and stabilising embankments, slopes and hillsides.

Scottish Government have also initiated a Significant Local Infrastructure process in which Local Resilience Partnerships are mapping infrastructure within their geographic areas. This will allow better understanding of this local infrastructure and will collate a rich picture to support further work, including identifying dependencies and interdependencies and allow improvements to business continuity and emergency response plans.

We would recommend that, should you require further information on storms and infrastructure in Aberdeenshire, you contact Aberdeenshire Council.

We are now working with local authorities and the Improvement Service on a National Improvement Project which will take focussed action in five local authorities as well as seek out and promote good practice to increase uptake for eligible two year olds across all local authority areas.

We are also progressing our early adopter community (EAC) work in six local authorities, backed by £16 million between 2024-25 and 2025-26. The EACs are expanding access to affordable childcare for low-income families with children from the early years through to the end of primary school and evaluating the difference this can make.

This expansion includes continued investment in four EACs established in 2022 in Dundee, Clackmannanshire, Glasgow and Inverclyde, as well as further expansion into new communities in Fife and Shetland.

Ultimately, it will help us to understand what it takes to design and deliver local childcare systems that support those families most at risk of living in poverty.

We have undertaken two key pieces of research, which were published last year. The first was work to map current ELC provision for younger children in Scotland and the second a literature review undertaken by Public Health Scotland. The purpose of this work was to help us understand and identify what models of ELC are best for younger children.

The evidence suggests that attending high quality formal childcare can have benefits for children’s cognitive development. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were found to benefit most from early access to formal childcare. However, the evidence of benefits for social, emotional and behavioural outcomes is more limited and mixed. The findings from this research supports taking a considered approach to policy development so that we understand what is right for families with children under three.

We will continue to build on this early insights work by piloting new approaches via funding from the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund to test models of holistic family support, learning from our EACs and reviewing current evidence.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving our existing funded ELC offer and to taking the time needed to deliver a childcare expansion that is both fair and affordable, giving children the best possible start in life and supporting parents and carers to work, train and take up education opportunities.