ABSTRACT
Education is completely devolved to the Scottish Government who in turn shares responsibility for its governance with the 32 local authorities. Responsibility for oversight of the policy was given to the Minister for Learning, Sciences and Scotland's Languages, himself a native speaker of Scots and learner of Gaelic and Norwegian. An extensive review of Scottish teacher education undertaken by the Chief Inspector HMI highlighted the need for the provision of high-quality professional learning for teachers. the Scotland National Centre for Languages (SCILT) team was extensively enlarged in order to be in a position to support its local authority partners effectively. A national languages leadership programme was launched by Education Scotland and SCILT in 2014. In 2015 questions about language learning included in the Scottish Survey of Social Attitudes revealed that the vast majority of those interviewed thought that language learning was very important for their children.
