Scotland most highly educated country in Europe, report shows

[Graham]

Scotland most highly educated country in Europe, report shows

STV 5 JUNE 2014

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Scotland is the most highly educated country in Europe and among the best-educated in the world, according to UK statisticians.

More than two-fifths of people aged 25-64 in Scotland are educated to tertiary level, outstripping Ireland, Luxembourg and Finland at the top of the table, a new regional compendium by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed.

The rest of Europe, including the UK as a whole, falls below two-fifths, with Italy and Romania the lowest, according to the ONS.

Scotland is also up with Canada and Russia among the most well-educated countries in the world.

The compendium has been produced to inform the referendum campaign and contains figures on population, migration, economy and society.

At its launch in Edinburgh, ONS chief economic adviser Joe Grice said: "The purpose of the compendium is to place where we can comparable information about the four countries in the UK to bring together a resource to support public debate.

"Obviously in the context of Scotland it would be unrealistic to ignore the fact that there is a little referendum going on here which is relevant too."

He added: "In terms of the proportion of the population going into higher and tertiary education, Scotland actually has just about the highest in the world. Scotland also does very well in terms of people in the working-age population (16-64) that have got a qualification at NVQ4 or above.

"Both of those are quite strong indications of a skilled workforce in Scotland.

"At the other end of the scale, the proportion of people of working-age population with no qualifications is highest in Northern Ireland (17.2%), Wales (10.6%) and Scotland (10.3%) not dissimilar and England (9.1%) a bit below that.

"So, at the other end of the scale, Scotland doesn't come out quite at the same top-of-the-class way as the other two indicators.

"There is some pretty powerful evidence here."

The compendium also includes figures on "the Scottishness of Scotland", revealing that national identity is stronger north of the border, with over four-fifths (83%) declaring their national identity as Scottish, compared with 70% in England and two-thirds (66%) in Wales.

[Peikko]

Who does all the labor work in Scotland nowdays?

[Graham]

Who does all the labor work in Scotland nowdays?

People like me.

[Hjalt]

People like me.

Western countries could lower unemployment if more government projects and public works were built, all it needs are people with hands. And traditional trades like blacksmithery and woodwork are all but gone, it's a shame, these skills are easy to learn and effective. A university degree has become close to useless very often today - we don't need more philosophy or anthropology students racking up thousands of dollars of debt.

[Peikko]

Western countries could lower unemployment if more government projects and public works were built, all it needs are people with hands. And traditional trades like blacksmithery and woodwork are all but gone, it's a shame, these skills are easy to learn and effective. A university degree has become close to useless very often today - we don't need more philosophy or anthropology students racking up thousands of dollars of debt.

Western countries just don't have any money to do any public spending.

I don't know what's the unemployment among university graduates at the moment, but I would guess it has been bad past 5 years.