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Scottish Government officials met with representatives of Alexander Dennis on 12 September and 14 September. The First Minister then visited the Alexander Dennis site at Larbert on 15 September to announce Scottish Government support for the company’s furlough scheme. Papers relating to the meetings will be available upon appropriate request in due course.

The Scottish Government is delivering a transformation programme to reform the post-school education and skills system, which aims at making the system more responsive to Scotland’s strategic skills needs at national and regional levels.

Alongside reform, we are also taking targeted action to meet urgent skills needs in specific sectors. For example, we are investing up to £2 million to develop engineering skills in the Glasgow City Region through a programme led by Clyde Maritime Cluster, and the defence sector, with Skills Development Scotland. Member authorities, led by Inverclyde Council, are leading on engagement with local employability partnerships to identify individuals who would benefit; and offer training opportunities through interventions including Skills Academies, paid work experience and guaranteed interviews. Companies are also working innovatively with regional colleges and other partners to look at specific interventions that would support candidates with particular upskilling or reskilling needs or with additional barriers.

Operational decisions such as curriculum delivery are the responsibility of individual colleges.

The Scottish Government commissioned the report: Pupil projections and implications for teacher resourcing needs: education workforce modelling and research - gov.scot, which was published on 7 May 2024.

This independent research has informed our engagement with partners on the commitment to reduce class contact time for teachers. The modelling allowed for a range of scenarios based on various assumptions which indicates that phased implementation could begin provided teacher numbers were restored to 2023 levels.

The budget agreement reached with COSLA will therefore provided funding to Local Government to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels, to allow meaningful progress on reducing class contact time for teachers to be made. We remain committed to working with the teacher unions, and COSLA, through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, to agree our approach to delivering a reduction in class contact time.

Through the Colleges Tripartite Alignment Group, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), along with Colleges Scotland, regularly discuss issues in the sector, such as the college funding model.

The changes implemented by the SFC aim to deliver a fair and flexible distribution model, and as advised by the SFC at the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 1 October, they are engaging with Colleges Scotland and the wider college sector on the fundamental review of the funding allocation model.

In recognition that Scotland’s colleges are a vital part of our economy and wider society, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) allocations provide a 2.6% sector increase in teaching funding for 2025-26 compared to last year, with an increase of almost 5% in capital maintenance funding over the same period.

The Scottish Government is engaging very closely with Colleges Scotland on issues affecting the sector, while the SFC robustly monitors the position of the sector and the challenges faced, and considers appropriate forms of support, including to address short-term cash flow challenges.

Individual 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.

It is appropriate that course provision is reviewed by colleges on a regular basis, and there are many factors that can cause changes beyond the requirement to make savings. For example, this could include to refresh and update course content or to retire courses that no longer have student demand or support employer needs.

In response to a challenging fiscal environment, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) are seeing colleges take a variety of approaches. These include reviewing teaching provision, with a view to consolidating or rationalising curriculum, and the closure of courses that are not core to their strategic plan and are no longer financially sustainable.

Analysis of data from 2021-22 to 2022-23 by SFC showed, in the majority of cases, courses that are withdrawn tended to have low levels of uptake.

The SFC engages with institutions and other stakeholders, including employers, in line with their Outcomes Framework and Assurance Model - Scottish Funding Council (OF&AM). If any common themes are identified across the sector that suggest course provision is being negatively impacted, this will be further investigated.

The Scottish Government acknowledges the challenges teachers face, including in managing excessive workload.

That is why we are working with COSLA and the teaching unions to develop a plan to reduce class contact time for teachers, which is supported by increased funding for councils of £186.5 million to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels.

In addition, we are undertaking a range of additional measures including plans to commission independent work to examine how reducing unnecessary bureaucracy in Scottish education can improve teacher workload, and how greater use of digital technology can be utilised to help free up teachers’ time.

In recent years, we have also allocated more than £2m to specifically support the wellbeing of the education workforce and address a range of support needs, including teacher burnout.

We remain committed to sustained investment to strengthen provision of education in Scotland and we are providing local authorities with £185.5m in this year’s budget to maintain teacher numbers.

We remain committed to working with the teacher unions, and COSLA, through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, to agree our approach to delivering a reduction in class contact time. We are clear that reducing class contact time will help address critical concerns around teacher workload, thereby creating the space to drive improvement and reform in our schools and improve outcomes for pupils.

The Scottish Government reached a budget agreement with COSLA in December 2024 which included a commitment to make meaningful progress towards the implementation of a 90-minute reduction in teacher class contact time.

The Scottish Government regularly meets with representatives of teacher trade unions, including the Educational Institute of Scotland.