EARLIER this week I had the pleasure of visiting the new City Building college, a state-of-the-art training facility in Springburn in the heart of North Glasgow.

Housing 250 young apprentices every year, the training college will deliver skills from those traditionally required by the building industry such as stone masonry and brickwork right through to the soft furnishings that make a house a home.

But the college is also focusing on training up young Glaswegians in the new and emerging green skills increasingly in demand from the construction industry – from the installation and maintenance of air-source heat pumps replacing gas heating to other renewable energy sources such as solar panels.

These young people will be critical to Scotland’s efforts to reach net zero, equipping themselves at the same time with the skills and knowledge to carve solid and rewarding careers for themselves.

The college is just one example of the ways in which young people from Glasgow’s schools are leaving in ever greater numbers to the worlds of work, training and further and higher education.

Last week it emerged that a record 97.1% of the city’s senior pupils left school for a positive destination, a new ‘best ever’ for Glasgow and among the best in Scotland.

This is the second year in a row we’ve recorded our highest ever positive destination figures, a remarkable achievement from everyone in our school communities.

It’s also incredible progress in a short space of time. Even in the relatively recent past, too many young Glaswegians left school without the skills or qualifications needed to create good lives and solid economic futures for themselves and their families.

But the SNP administration, City Council, teachers, school staff and our various partners are determined that Glasgow’s young people get the best start in life through early intervention.

Closing the long-standing poverty-related attainment gap is embedded throughout our education work. This truly is a modern success story for Glasgow, one that has been delivered because we’ve confronted the city’s challenges with solutions, rather than hiding behind them as an excuse.

It also wasn’t so very long ago that national politicians such as former Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson took to UK-wide television to caricature and stigmatise young Glaswegians, using narrow, outdated and stereotypical views of educational success to compare our school leavers with those from other areas.

There remain too many people caught in the notion that the only gauge of success for a school leaver is a place at university.

Those people should meet the teachers and support staff whose outstanding commitment to improving learning continues to raise attainment in Glasgow, reduces the impact of poverty on learners and results in outcomes like last week’s record positive destination figures.

And more so, they should meet the many thousands of amazing young people who are – whether through university or not – making good lives for themselves and growing skills and knowledge that will underpin society’s future.

Providing our pupils with a rounded education and equipping school leavers with the power to determine their own futures is not a sign of failure. It’s the clearest sign that Glasgow’s schools and staff are delivering for our young people and are good enough for anyone’s children.

 

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THIS week marks 20 years since the Housing Stock Transfer. The plan to transfer 80,000 homes away from the City Council to social landlords and community ownership was at the time hugely contentious and fiercely contested.

Two decades on and with the benefit of hindsight it’s no exaggeration to say the Stock Transfer was a defining moment in the history of modern Glasgow.

The demolitions, refurbishments and the building programme that followed that decision by tenants were the catalysts for the biggest physical transformations this city has experienced in modern times.

Many of Glasgow’s neighbourhoods are often barely recognisable to those of us familiar with the city before the turn of the century. In fact, Glaswegians under the age of 16 would struggle to recognise the areas still routinely used on photographs to illustrate social challenges.

This was city-wide regeneration with social and affordable housing and the empowerment of communities at its heart.

It’s always a source of some frustration that this transformation is sometimes played down, misunderstood or, worse still, totally ignored, often by those who never experienced the impact of poor-quality housing.

Yet, as I’ve written here in the past, the United Nations now holds Glasgow up as an international example of how to do physical and social regeneration of communities well.

The Stock Transfer may have been a turning point but our work with social landlords of all sizes is far from complete. We have many thousands of new homes to deliver in the years ahead, bringing more affordable housing and new communities into our city centre and meeting the challenges of the climate emergency by ensuring Glasgow’s homes are warm, efficient and carbon-neutral.

Glasgow’s transformational journey is far from over but the success of our neighbourhoods in recent years demonstrates this city’s capacity to change for the better.