In the 1980s, Scotland found itself in a tight situation. Suffering the effects of the recession that was a social and commercial backdrop of this era, many of its key employment industries were beginning to flounder. The high percentage of the manpower to be found within Scotland at the time was un-skilled or semi-skilled at best, they were faced with grim prospects. The political situation at the time did little to help, the trade unions were broken, their power stripped away. In this decade, children lost the safety net provided to them previously, this was the first decade in which a young person could no longer count on a position alongside their father, with his employer.

Scotland was relatively slow to act on this problem, slower than Great Britain, and lagged behind almost a decade with re-training its workforce. During the 1990s, educational focus was targeted squarely on new technology, and large amounts of government funding were made available to educational establishment who could prove they were producing results. This emerging, highly trained workforce, attracted companies to the area, providing jobs and supplying tax revenue. The success of this strategy can be seen in the extremely strong position which Scotland holds within the “smart performers” industries, such as life sciences and micro technology.