This week we had the S2 course choice event.  Leading into this event we had seen a lot of media coverage about job losses in the energy sector.  It would have been easy to be pessimistic about future prospects for youngsters.  However a phrase was in the back of my mind as I prepared for meeting the S2 parents – “necessity is the mother of invention”

In essence I am taking this to mean that we will all be inventive when we have to.  Over the last 30 or so years jobs have been plentiful so we have not been forced to look beyond the energy sector for most of our opportunities.  In the next 30 years we will have to look beyond that sector and I have confidence that people in NE Scotland will rise to that challenge.  The skills and talents that we took from traditional industries such as fishing, farming, granite etc and adapted to the hostile environment of sub sea engineering can be adapted again into serving the needs of future generations.

That was the underlying message to S2 parents and needs to be the message we give to the young people.