Chamber and committees

An action forum on youth employment is being planned in Erskine (for Renfrewshire, Inverclyde and West Dunbartonshire) in August 2012, with a wider rural skills and youth employment action forum taking place in Oban in September 2012. Further events will take place later in the year in Ayrshire, Tayside and Forth Valley.

An action forum on youth employment was held in Dumfries on 21 June. Those invited included local employers, young people, training providers, politicians and representatives of public, private and third sector organisations. Invitations to the event in Oban, being planned for September, will cover a similar list.

The minimum number of hours of work experience required to qualify for a certificate for work readiness will be 192 hours.

In December 2011 the Scottish Government announced it would support 1,000 of the most disadvantaged young people including; care leavers, ex-young offenders and young carers, to enter the labour market over the next three years.

An Employer Recruitment Incentive of £1,500 is available this year to support employers who have employed a disadvantaged young person. The incentive will be subject to continuous evaluation and improvement measures throughout the three years that this incentive is available.

Please find attached the link to the section on the Skills Development Scotland website that details the public sector contribution rates across modern apprenticeship frameworks by age.

http://www.providercentral.org.uk/OurServices/NationalTrainingProgrammes/Modern_Apprenticeships.aspx.

The Scottish Government is in discussions with a number of equalities organisations and once these are finalised we shall publish the equalities impact assessment.

The Scottish Government invests £2 billion a year in grant funding to improve the future employment prospects of those participating in further and higher education. Whether in school, college or university, individuals can gain access to careers advice and support through Skills Development Scotland. Educational institutions also routinely encourage students to make full use of their own local careers facilities, with a view to aiding employment.

The Nigg Skills Academy has been developed to provide access to training which will equip individuals with the skills to participate in the opportunities that will flow from current and future investment in Nigg and in the wider energy industry.

In 2012-13 the Nigg Skills Academy has been contracted to deliver 270 modern apprenticeship starts. 140 of the contracted places are for 16 to 24-year-olds.

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is the preferred source of detailed data on young unemployed people.

The latest APS data available is for April 2011 to March 2012. This data shows that there were 4,500 people aged 16 to 18 who were not in full-time education and had been unemployed for over year. It is not possible to provide data broken down by local authority area due to the underlying sample sizes.

Given the continuing challenges within the labour market for young people, it is important that we continue to maximise the number of 16 to 24-year-olds moving into employed apprenticeships. All approved modern apprenticeship frameworks in Scotland are funded for this group, with higher contribution rates for apprentices aged 16 to 19.

Skills Development Scotland will continue to prioritise the majority of modern apprenticeship places to the 16 to 19-year-old cohort, get Ready for Work places to 16 to 18-year-olds, and Training for Work places to those aged 18 and above.