Author: SCDI
Date of Publication: 2020
Key messages on language skills:
Scotland faces a linguistic and cultural awareness skills gap. A lack of language skills across society is a barrier to many businesses exporting and the further internationalisation of the Scottish economy.
Improving the workforce’s language skills could boost Scottish GDP by up to £6.3 billion by reducing linguistic and cultural awareness barriers to internationalisation.
In an increasingly global economy and society, demand for language knowledge and skills and socio-cultural awareness will only increase
Language barriers are a significant barrier to the key objective of further internationalisation of the Scottish economy. Scottish businesses are often unable to maximise opportunities for increasing their exports to key target markets due to a lack of linguistic skills or socio-cultural awareness in their workforce
The Scottish Government, local authorities and employers should escalate investment in Modern Languages education and linguistic skills in the workforce to close the linguistic skills and cultural awareness gap
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