Scottish Government to invest £200 million in adult upskilling and retraining opportunities as part of Covid-19 recovery strategy

Funding to focus on workers in areas of economy particularly impacted by pandemic and the transition to Net Zero

The Scottish Government has announced that it is to invest £200 million in adult upskilling and retraining opportunities as part of its Covid-19 recovery strategy.

Introducing the new Covid Recovery Strategy: For a Fairer Future, the Scottish Government says that its purpose is to address systemic inequalities made worse by Covid-19, improve people’s wellbeing, and remobilise public services to be more focused on people's needs, with actions to include -

• investing £200 million in adult upskilling and retraining opportunities to help retrain and reskill workers in areas of the economy particularly impacted by the pandemic and the transition to Net Zero;
• helping low income families most at risk of experiencing poverty with £8.65 million for the Parental Employability Support Fund in 2021/2022, and at least a further £15 million across 2022/2024;
• providing £15 million to local authorities in 2021/2022 to deliver locally-based mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people aged 5 to 24;
• rolling out the Scottish child payment to children under 16 by the end of 2022;
• providing free school lunches to every child in primary school and to all children in state-funded special schools by August 2022;
• ensuring staff delivering direct adult social care are paid at least the real Living Wage, with additional funding of £64.5 million this year;
• assisting long-term unemployed people to gain fair work through the No One Left Behind approach with local government and the third sector, with £20 million funding over the next 12 months; and
• ensuring every one aged between 16 and 24 will have the opportunity this year to study, take up an apprenticeship, job or work experience, or formal volunteering, as part of the Young Person’s Guarantee, with funding of up to £70 million.

Deputy First Minister and Covid Recovery Secretary John Swinney said -

'The impacts of this pandemic have not been felt evenly with the most disadvantaged suffering disproportionately from the virus, and the social and economic effects of lockdown restrictions.

For that reason, our recovery must go further than how life was before Covid. This strategy sets out how we will do that, working with local government, the third sector, and businesses large and small...

By working together with the same energy, imagination, and urgency as we approached the pandemic, we can drive a recovery that delivers more for all of Scotland.'

For more information, see A fairer future from gov.scot