Is Scotland too obsessed with academic qualifications? A one'day conference at Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh this Wednesday starts with the premise that current attitudes are widening our skills gap. Conference participants aim to highlight the opportunities available to youngsters who take a Modern Apprenticeship and to encourage employers and training providers to work together and share their expertise. Aimed at local authorities, teachers, further education representatives, business and trade bodies, unions and government departments the event has been "stimulated by" the Scottish government's skills strategy and is organised by Holyrood magazine. The event will be chaired by journalist and broadcaster Michael Crow. Peter Hughes, chief executive of Scottish Engineering, calls the event "an ideal opportunity for people to get together and do something positive to help the economic future of Scotland. "University is not the answer for every Scottish youngster and we must stop telling them that they are failures if they don't go to university," he says. Agenda can think of quite a few failures who did go there.
***
MORE support for the no-brainer of an Edinburgh Park stop for the current Glasgow train, this time from Laura Gordon, pictured below, of the Glasgow-Edinburgh collaboration initiative. She says that "it simply doesn't make sense for this area, which is Scotland's largest economic centre after the cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, not to be properly serviced by transport links". The remarks come as the collaboration initiative, which has successfully talked up the benefits of better links across the central belt, prepares to change its funding basis. Because of the Scottish government's new concordat with local authorities, its funding from the ring'fenced Cities Growth Fund comes to an end in August 2008 and the City of Edinburgh Council, Glasgow City Council and Scottish Enterprise have each committed £100,000 to help fund the 2008-09 Business Plan after that.
***
IT was Chairman Mao who said "seek the truth from facts" but he would be turning in his mausoleum if he knew that an army of Chinese financial bureaucrats had ventured to the birthplace of capitalism (or Adam Smith at least) last week to pick up tips from the cream of the Scottish accountancy profession. The Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland ICAS has a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA), meaning both organisations exchange expertise on training and development of accountants. Twenty-five senior officials from the ministry of finance, the state council, the China Youth Centre for International Exchange, the governments of Hong Kong and Macau, and the All-China Youth Federation learned all about the British tax system. ICAS's Neil Wallace said: "It was a great success, building on the strong relationship we already have with the CICPA. We already train Chinese nationals through the CA training programme, but we also have an important role to play in working with other organisations in China, helping them to build strong educational and professional standards."
ICAS prides itself on its global mission to develop financial stability through the education and professional standards of accountants. This year alone they have worked in Vietnam, Laos, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Romania.
