The Scottish government has again come under pressure over its failure to get a replacement up and running for European Union student exchange programme Erasmus+.
Scottish Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said today in the Scottish Parliament that it had been “four or five years” since the UK government took the controversial decision to withdraw from Erasmus + but still the promised Scottish replacement had not materialised.
In the same time period, she said, Wales had managed to set up its international learning exchange programme, Taith.
Ms Duncan-Glancy said: “The Scottish government have delayed any action on this. In the time it has taken to set up a far smaller scheme, 6,000 students in Wales have gone across to 95 different countries.”
Liam McArthur, a Liberal Democrat MSP, also questioned the time it was taking to introduce a scheme and asked why the Scottish government approach was “so different and so much slower than their counterparts in Wales”.
Replacing the Erasmus student exchange scheme
Meanwhile, SNP MSP Rona Mackay suggested that secondary students in her constituency were missing out because of the delay.
Graeme Dey, the minister for higher and further education, said he wished the government had been able to move more quickly but “we are where we are”. He said he wanted to look forwards, not backwards.
Mr Dey said that in 2023-24 the Scottish government had funded “a test and learn project” and that it planned to “build on that in the coming years” with a view to developing “a programme which provides opportunities for all parts of our education system, including schools”.
“I don’t just want to have a programme for the sake of a programme. I want to have a programme that reflects the needs of the sector,” Mr Dey said.
The UK left the Erasmus+ scheme as a result of Brexit. The Scottish and Welsh governments have argued that the alternative Turing Scheme - for students in schools, colleges and universities - is inadequate.
In a joint statement, issued in January 2021, the Welsh and Scottish governments described the Turing Scheme as “a lesser imitation of the real thing”.
However, while in Wales Taith has been established, an equivalent scheme has yet to become available in Scotland.
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