Education and Skills Support Structures: Comparative Perspective. Final Report

In response to a Review of Support Structures for Enterprise, Education and Skills launched by the Scottish Government, this report focuses on education and skills and considers the systems in place in 10 smaller economies which may have lessons of value for educating the current review in Scotland. The brief for the study requested the development of an international small, advanced economy perspective on education and skills policies and agency support structures. The broad question areas to be covered included the following: what are the key policies and programmes? How is support delivered? Who are the key stakeholders? The brief also asked for the identification of examples of best practice in relation to support agencies. Another key element in the brief was the requirement to align with the previously commissioned study on enterprise support structures and agencies. A starting point in this alignment was to select the same small economies already identified for the enterprise study, namely Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland.