Chamber and committees

Information on access to Fair Start Scotland (FSS) service by age is published quarterly in Scotland’s Devolved Employment Services: A Statistical Summary .

Between April 2018 (when FSS was launched) and September 2020 (the latest period for which data is available), 5,386 young people (16-24 years) accessed Fair Start Scotland services. Of these:

• 1,898 were reported by the service providers as long term unemployed (they had not been working for 12 months or more);
• 233 were reported as never worked but the length of their unemployment is unknown, and the length of unemployment was not reported for a further 1,256 people.

Through our additional investment of £60 million in 2020-21 we have provided funding for new opportunities, and have also enhanced existing opportunities, to support young people in Scotland as part of the Young Person’s Guarantee. These opportunities will include up to:

• 11,000 employability opportunities through local authorities;
• 5,000 places in college;
• 1,400 new apprentice pathways

Further funding of £70 million has been confirmed for 2021-2022 for the Young Person’s Guarantee. We will shortly set out further details on how this investment will be used to provide additional new opportunities for young people. This is part of £125 million funding to support young people, those made redundant, and people who have been unemployed for a long time.

These new additional opportunities will complement our existing provision through schools, universities and colleges, our person-centred employability services Fair Start Scotland, No One Left Behind and the Employability Fund and third sector support such as Discovering Your Potential, Our Future Now and Community Jobs Scotland.

The Scottish Government will also continue to ensure that apprenticeship opportunities are open to all by investing through Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) to maximise apprenticeship starts, including additional investment of £21 million to deliver Foundation and Graduate Apprenticeships in colleges and universities.

Given the uncertainty facing the labour market we are looking to use our investment to give local partnerships flexibility to meet local needs and provide coherence with DWP programmes. We are working with partners to develop a rigorous measurement and evaluation framework to show how the Guarantee is delivering this range of different opportunities to support young people.

As part of this process, we published the young person’s labour market dashboard on 28 January: https://www.gov.scot/publications/young-persons-local-authority-labour-market-dashboard/ . This new, interactive tool has been developed to provide a summary of labour market measures for those aged 16 to 24 by local authority area. This dashboard, along with the annual Participation Measure produced by Skills Development Scotland, will help us to measure uptake and target opportunities and support.

The Strategic Framework Business Fund offers grants of up to £3,000 for businesses required to close, including theatres. Theatres meeting the criteria for these grants were also eligible for an additional one-off grant of up to £9,000 for‎ non-essential retail and leisure businesses.

The guidance for the hospitality, non-essential retail and leisure top up fund did not specify the types of businesses eligible for the retail and leisure top up, and we subsequently updated the Scottish Government webpage and contacted local authorities to clarify the position on businesses eligible for this additional grant payment.

Further information regarding opportunities created by the Young Person's Guarantee and our approach to measurement and evaluation can be found in response to Parliamentary Question S5W-34614 on 1 February 2021.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The Guarantee was launched in November 2020. We have worked closely with partners to build on our existing strong education, skills and employability infrastructure to deliver the recommendations from Sandy Begbie’s report.

We are working closely with partners from across the public, private and third sectors to progress towards our aim of ensuring that within two years, every person aged between 16 and 24 will have the opportunity to study; take up an apprenticeship, job or work experience; or participate in formal volunteering. There is no process to sign up for the Guarantee as all young people requiring help, should be able to access support.

Through our additional investment of £60m in 2020-21 we have provided funding for around 18,000 new and enhanced existing opportunities to support young people. Including provision through Local Authorities, Colleges, Skills Development Scotland and the third sector.

The early success of the Young Person’s Guarantee will be maintained next year. Additional investment of £125 million will go towards the Young Person’s Guarantee, the National Transition Training Fund and other initiatives, ensuring the future workforce has the skills needed for a green recovery and supporting those at risk of long term unemployment.

We are working with partners to develop a rigorous measurement and evaluation framework to show how the Guarantee is delivering a range of different opportunities to support young people. As part of this process, we published the young person’s labour market dashboard on 28 January. Young person’s local authority labour market dashboard - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . This new, interactive tool has been developed to provide a summary of labour market measures for those aged 16 to 24 by local authority. This dashboard along with the annual Participation Measure produced by Skills Development Scotland will help us to measure and target opportunities and support.

As detailed in the Scottish Government’s response to question‎ S5W-34612 on 1 February 2021 we have provided funding to create around 18,000 opportunities for young people in 2020-21. S5W-34612 also provides details of additional funding for the Guarantee, Employability and Skills next financial year.

In 2020-21 the Scottish Government provided £30m to local partnerships, via local authorities, for the Guarantee in addition to the funding already provided to them for all age employability services. Based on the individual needs of young people and the local labour market, local partnerships can decide to use this funding to provide employer recruitment incentives, which includes wages incentives, to support young people into work. The duration and level of support required by the young person to access and sustain their employment will depend on their needs.

We have also developed an approach to employer engagement, built around 5 asks which encompasses the breadth of activity around youth employment and skills. On launch we announced headline early adopters, including SSE, CapGemini, NHS Lothian and the Scottish Government.

We are developing a measurement and evaluation framework with partners to help measure the impact of the Guarantee. This will include information relating to job opportunities created directly from delivery partners, but also, broader evidence regarding the labour market and the Participation Measure published by Skills Development Scotland.

Scottish Government already publishes a quarterly national Statistics publication which measures labour market outcomes for young people. We have also published the young person’s labour market dashboard on 28 January. Young person’s local authority labour market dashboard This new, interactive tool has been developed to provide a summary of labour market measures for those aged 16 to 24 by local authority.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

It is our ambition to ensure Scotland’s colleges have an adaptive, engaged and professionalised workforce, with a focus on developing good practice, co-ordination and partnership.

We continue to support the professional registration of lecturing staff to raise the status of lecturers and enhance the professionalism of the lecturing workforce.