SCOTTISH Labour leader Johann Lamont will today call for a "second education boom" as she commits her party to a 20-year plan to transform schools, colleges and universities.
In a keynote conference speech she will accuse the SNP of "savaging" colleges to fund free university tuition and demand a renewed focus on lifelong learning, a policy pursued by previous Labour-led administrations.
She will also challenge First Minister Alex Salmond to re-open the budget and discuss ways to provide all two-year-olds with 600 hours of free nursery care. The policy would cost £100 million per year and require cuts to other areas of Government spending.
She will tell delegates in Inverness: "When we go into the next Scottish election we will have plans not just to change education over one term but a vision which will look forward 20 years.
"Because if our schools, colleges and universities are to be the best in the world we need that length of vision.
"And we will not pay for opportunity for some while denying opportunity for others. The savaging of the college system to fund universities has been a disgrace.
"I want and we need a Scotland which does education for all."
She will add: "Let others talk of an oil boom. Our greatest resource will always be our people and if we are to give people the chance to fulfil their potential it is a second education boom we need in Scotland."
Labour strategists insisted the comments were not a signal Labour was preparing to back university tuition fees.
However, insiders have previously hinted at a return to the old graduate endowment, through which graduates were charged £2000 to help fund bursaries for students for poorer backgrounds, as Labour continues to question the fairness and affordability of universal entitlements.
Ms Lamont will also attack the SNP's record on childcare.
The Scottish Government published legislation this week to guarantee three and four-year-olds 600 hours of nursery care, six years after the Nationalists first made the pledge.
But Ms Lamont will say: "Labour in government had a childcare strategy within months of coming into office.
"I challenge Alex Salmond to meet me this week and bring his budget. I will work with him to ensure we can deliver the childcare that a modern family needs."
Ms Lamont will address the conference as tensions persist within the party over plans to hand Holyrood full control of income tax.
In a radio interview yesterday, she conceded some party members saw the proposals as radical and "may be concerned about them".
She is expected to seek to reassure her party – especially the large number of MPs who remain sceptical – in her speech, following SNP claims that Labour's plans to extend devolution were "descending into farce".
Yesterday Labour leader Ed Miliband launched a fierce attack on the SNP Government, claiming it was as divisive as Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives.
He used a 23-minute conference address, delivered without notes, to accuse Alex Salmond of cynically supporting the Tories.
He said: "His is a narrow nationalism that prays for Tory success so he can convince people that the only way to get rid of the Tories is to get out of the UK. Have you ever heard such a selfish, self-serving, narrow-minded, blinkered, in-it-for-yourself, divide and rule piece of nonsense?"
He said Labour, not the SNP, would end Conservative government and set out his vision for a "new economic settlement" for Britain.
He confirmed Labour would set up a network of regional banks to support funding to small businesses, improve apprenticeships, increase house-building and guarantee jobs for long-term unemployed young people.
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