Trade Unions
Building an empowered workforce for Scotland’s economy
The OU collaborates with trade unions to provide accessible learning opportunities that support skills development and career progression for workers.
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) and the OU share a common mission to support the upskilling, reskilling and lifelong learning of people throughout Scotland, operating at a national scale with local focus improving Scotland’s economy, growth and industry needs.
We share a commitment to ensure access to skills and learning opportunities, and to be an enabler to fair work. Trade union partners across Scotland work with the OU to deliver customised learning solutions that help meet the specific needs of its members, ensuring they have the skills needed for the future of work.
Our flexible learning model allows learners to pursue education at their own pace, minimising disruption to workflow and maximising engagement and retention.
We work in partnership and there's a true partnership. And it's that shared idea and understanding I think that makes The Open University and EIS such a good partnership. EIS and The Open University have worked together for a number of years.
We've developed learning in response to EIS member needs and EIS staff have undertaken OU learning such as microcredentials. Upskilling at The Open University prepared me to take on more additional responsibilities in my current role that provides knowledge to deal with the very much real world complex problems.
I've undertaken a number of Open University microcredentials. They were incredibly important for my own professional learning, in particular my confidence enough to undertake five of them. I feel it's made me perform better in my current role and it helped me to share that knowledge that I learned with my colleagues. What I've appreciated is the support that The Open University offers in terms of being able to discuss opportunities, chat about ideas.
There was different mentors and tutors who were available to speak to about the different learning to have that sort of peer-to-peer support. They're really collaborative opportunities, so that's great for both members and for staff. It's been a really rich time of learning. All I can say is it added so much value to my career. The partnership has gone from strength to strength. There's a lot about The Open University to recommend to other organisations, particularly unions.
Scottish Union Learning (SUL) is part of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC). It supports trade unions in accessing skills and lifelong learning opportunities for their members.
Our partnership with the STUC and SUL has been in place for over 10 years. It enables us to offer group-based higher education in the workplace to union members. Typically the participants are new to university-level study.
We provide workshop-based courses, individual modules and routes on to degrees. Through this work we have developed a powerful employer-union-university partnership.
The Open Societal Challenges programme at OU is a research initiative that aims to tackle some of the most important challenges of our time through impact-driven research. The Programme focusses on the themes of Tackling Inequalities, Living Well, and Sustainability. Engaging with communities, charities, and businesses is at the core of our ethos.
We are committed to support research co-design and participatory research drawing on the OU’s unique expertise and strengths in this area.
Our objective is to work with communities so that our research builds the power and capacity of local communities to sustain meaningful change.
Find out how OU in Scotland can support you.
Trade Unions who have worked with The Open University in Scotland include:
