Targets and strategies

The following public bodies and organisations have a role in helping to improve children and young people’s learning and education, and they implement targets and strategies in order to do so.

Scottish Government

Education in Scotland is overseen by the Scottish Government through the Learning Directorate. Inspections and audits of educational standards are conducted by three bodies: Care Inspectorate inspects care standards in pre-school provision; Education Scotland for pre-school, primary, education, further and community education; with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education responsible for higher education.

Current Scottish Government targets and strategies relating to learning from birth to young adult include:

• free pre-school childcare provision 1,140 hours per year by 2020, with outdoor play to be included in this;
• the Bookbug programme providing free books and learning sessions for young children;
• provision of Resources for parents such as Play, Talk, Read to help parents to interact with their children effectively;
• the Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative to improve and oversee school curriculum and qualifications;
• the National Improvement Framework to deliver excellence and equity in education;
• the Scotland's Schools for the Future  school building strategy;
• providing guidance to assist local authorities to locate children if they go missing from education;
• the Curriculum for Excellence, introduced in 2011, which aims to achieve a transformation in education in Scotland by providing a coherent, more flexible and enriched curriculum from 3 – 18, firmly focused on the needs of the child and young person; 
• Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) - the national approach to improving outcomes and supporting the wellbeing of children and young people;
• the National Youth Work Strategy for Scotland in conjunction with Youth Links Scotland, and others;
• various targets and strategies in relation to youth employment including modern apprenticeship provision and Educational Maintenance Allowances;
• the Scottish Attainment Challenge, which is a targeted approach to closing the attainment gap;
• at Higher and Further Education levels, financial support for study is provided to students through a mixture of bursaries and loans;
• at university level, Fair access policies and monitoring, to help universities and colleges to support young people from disadvantaged areas accessing higher and further education;
• the Scottish Youth Parliament is supported by the Scottish Government to allow young people to engage with policy making in Scotland on various issues, including learning and education. 

Glasgow City Council

The Glasgow City Council Strategic Plan 2017 to 2022  sets out the priority themes and commitments that will be delivered over by the council, its services and arm’s length organisations.

This is delivered on a thematic basis across seven cross cutting themes including Excellent and Inclusive Education.

Glasgow City Council Glasgow City Council works closely with the support, delivery and implementation of the Government’s national targets and strategies across the various nursery, primary and secondary schools in Glasgow. Some specific strategies include:

• Developing the Young Workforce, Employability and Enterprise Programmes in Schools. 
• Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge, 2015 – 2020, which is a holistic strategy for raising attainment and achievement for all children and young people and incorporates the Scottish Attainment Challenge. Glasgow’s strategy for improving numeracy and literacy across Glasgow's primary schools takes a two-pronged approach: Glasgow Counts, to raise attainment in numeracy, and Literacy for All, to raise attainment in literacy.
• CREATE, which is a partnership between Glasgow City Councils' Education Services Instrumental Music Service (IMS), Youth Music Initiative (YMI) and Partnership Projects supporting all Primary, Secondary and Early Years Establishments in the City.  

Third Sector and/or Collaborative

Many organisations are working in the area of education and learning in Glasgow and Scotland and are too numerous to list comprehensively. However some particularly relevant programmes are highlighted below. 

• MCR Pathways is a Scottish charity and supports school-based Mentoring and Talent Taster programme supports disadvantaged and care-experienced young people.
• Children in Scotland work on a number of projects, one of which is CHANGE, a three-year project (2016-2019) project working to create better early years provision childcare for communities in the East of Glasgow.
• Sistema Scotland is a charity who use participation in their Big Noise orchestra programmes to provide an intensive orchestral programme for school-age children and young people in the Govanhill area of Glasgow. 

A number of organisations are supportive of promoting or developing play and/or outdoor based learning strategies. These include:

• John Muir Trust
• Duke of Edinburgh
• Forest Schools Scotland
• Play Scotland
• Upstart Scotland
• Scottish Natural Heritage

Background documents/references

Delivering excellence and equity in Scottish education: a delivery plan for Scotland 

Independent Advisor on Poverty and Inequality: shifting the curve - a report for the First Minister

How well is Glasgow City Council improving learning, raising attainment and closing the poverty-related attainment gap? - March 2019