A NEW approach to encourage Scotland's young people to stay in education beyond the age of 16 has been announced by the Scottish Government.
"16+ Learning Choices" seeks to provide better opportunities for young people to learn, as well as a greater range of guidance on the options open to them. It also aims to offer better and more accessible financial support to students who wish to sta
y in education.
How these aims are to be achieved will be discussed in a forthcoming consultation exercise.
• A NEW £16 million centre for engineering, construction and science at Adam Smith College has been approved by Fife Council.
The expansion, at the Stenton Campus in Glenrothes, will provide new laboratories, testing facilities and engineering workshops, as well as seeing a 40 per cent increase in the number of students.
Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring, and it is due to open in 2010.
• THE Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET), which provides a first-hand experience of nature to Scottish pupils, is to receive a grant of almost £200,000 from Scottish Natural Heritage.
The money, which represents 60 per cent of the trust's total funding requirement over three years, will be used to train RHET staff to run field trips.
Last year, the trust took more than 10,000 pupils on to farms and estates to learn about subjects including farming, forestry and conservation.
• THE Joot Theatre Company, run by current and former students and staff of Dundee University, is to take a production to the Sorbonne in Paris this month.
The company will perform the medieval morality play Everyman in the Cardinal Richelieu Amphitheatre on 16 December, and later Jodi-Anne George, a lecturer in English at the university, will give a masterclass on the play to students at the French Institute.
• TOY building-block enthusiasts from schools across the country gathered at Edinburgh University on Monday to compete in the first Lego League in Scotland.
Teams aged between nine and 16, from Edinburgh, the Lothians, Fife and the Borders, were challenged to build and programme Lego robots to carry out missions on the theme of "climate connections".
The winners came from Primary 5 at Craiglockhart Primary School in Edinburgh.
PERTH College UHI is celebrating its success after picking up four awards in just six days.
The winning run began on 20 November when it scooped the President's Award at the Perthshire Chamber of Commerce Business Star Awards.
The next day, the college's international centre was given the prize for outstanding international achievement by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry.
On 24 November, the college's market research programme was named runner-up in the national College Marketing Network's FE First Awards, and the following day the international centre received further recognition as it was highly commended at Scotland's Colleges Annual Awards.
EVENTS
• GENERAL Sir Mike Jackson, a former head of the British Army, will take part in an academic panel to discuss the ethical challenges posed by war at a public debate at Edinburgh University tomorrow.He will be joined by political philosopher Professor Cécile Fabre, and theologian Professor Oliver O'Donovan at the event held to celebrate the opening of the university's Just World Institute.
The full article contains 547 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
