Doing Nats’ job for them ..yet again
I ENTERED politics to improve opportunities for Scotland’s young people.
They must be equipped with the skills they need to compete for the jobs of tomorrow.
That’s why Labour are the only party opposed to Tory and SNP austerity. We would invest in Scotland’s education system, ending the cuts that Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon have imposed on communities.
But we can only design policies to improve outcomes for young people if they are based on better quality information.
The Scottish Government’s current “positive destination” criteria are no longer fit for purpose.
The SNP consider a school leaver who ends up on a zero-hours contract to be in a “positive destination”.
There’s nothing positive about the rise in zero-hours contracts, yet that’s how they are classified by this Government. That must end.
The system also takes no account of insecure or temporary employment, or retention in education courses, because it fails to track the progress of youngsters over a number of years. That also must end.
If SNP ministers are serious about improving life chances for the next generation, they have to get serious about facing up to how well, or how badly, their policies are working.
It’s time for a major overhaul. SNP ministers have been too distracted to focus on the day job, so my colleague Iain Gray is doing their job for them and has put forward ideas that would transform the way we measure success.