Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government and its partners undertake a wide range of activity to encourage the uptake of our apprenticeship offer, with a focus on young people.

Through our Developing the Young Workforce activity we promote apprenticeship opportunities to school students, employers and parents. Skills Development Scotland deliver Career Information, Advice and Guidance (CIAG) within all Local Authority secondary schools. CIAG services for individuals post-school are delivered through Skills Development Scotland public access centres.

Skills Development Scotland takes a number proactive steps to encourage more people into apprenticeships by having an overall marketing strategy which looks at presenting apprenticeships as an option for all ages. This includes:

•  The promotion of Apprenticeships via Skills Development Scotland’s web service, ‘Apprenticeships.Scot’, which supports work based learning and provides a focus for advertising opportunities.
•  Scottish Apprenticeship Week, is the national campaign aimed at showcasing the benefits of work based learning, and is comprised of events taking place across the country supported by a dedicated media campaign.
•  The annual Scottish Apprenticeship Awards are held in November, recognising the achievements of individual employers and their apprentices and further promoting the benefits of apprenticeships.

The Scottish Government is also expanding the number of Foundation Apprenticeships, to equip more young people at school with industry recognised qualifications, skills and the practical experience that industry demands, both now and in the future. Pupils completing a Foundation Apprenticeship have the opportunity to apply for an accelerated entry onto a related Modern Apprenticeship.

Despite the relatively recent introduction of Foundation Apprenticeships in 2016, in a short period of time we have rapidly grown the number of opportunities from a standing start, to deliver an increase of over 640% in the numbers between 2016 and 2018. Since their introduction, Foundation Apprenticeships have increased from 346 in 2016, to 1,245 in 2017 and to 2,600 in 2018.

The Scottish Government is committed to fulfilling our ambitious targets of 5000 Foundation Apprenticeships in 2019, and the further embedding of FAs in the curriculum of schools across the country. Foundation Apprenticeships are already available in schools in each of the 32 local authority areas.

To encourage those over 25 to undertake Apprenticeships in addition to continuing our commitment to implement Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy: ‘Developing the Young Workforce’, in 2018-2019 we are also delivering a range of measures to provide access to apprenticeships for the over 25s including:

•  An increase in the number of Modern Apprenticeships Frameworks that can be supported for apprentices aged over 25.
•  Enhanced contribution rates for disabled people and those with experience of care up to the age of 29.
•  An increase in Graduate Apprenticeships which are not age restricted.

Published 2016-2017 annual Apprenticeship statistics , showed 24% of new Modern Apprenticeship starts were in the 25+ age group.

Through implementation of Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce, the Scottish Government’s national skills agency, Skills Development Scotland continue to prioritise STEM apprenticeships as part of Apprenticeship contracting arrangements.

Our ambition was further supported through publication, of the Scottish Government STEM strategy in October 2017, which brings together actions being taken to ensure that Scotland has a highly educated and skilled population equipped with the STEM skills, knowledge and capability required to adapt and thrive in the fast-paced changing world and economy around us. The Strategy prioritises STEM in the expansion of the apprenticeship family to reflect labour market demand.

Information relating to academic year 2018-2019 will become available following its commencement. Skills Development Scotland aim to publish an updated Foundation Apprenticeships report at the end of this year. At that stage a comparison with 2017-2018 will be available.

According to Scottish Funding Council (SFC) figures, there has been an increase of around 30% in the number of senior phase enrolments on vocational courses since DYW was introduced.

All colleges (with the exception of specialist colleges Newbattle Abbey College and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig) now offer SPVP enrolments.

Education Scotland are working with individual schools and colleges to review variability and to ensure the right breadth of opportunities are available in all schools.

The following table lists the proportion of secondary schools, broken down by Local Authority, offering vocational options in college:

As part of the Developing the Young Workforce programme, Education Scotland has introduced the Careers Education Standard (3-18). This is a new set of guidance for schools, designed to better assist young people to make informed learning and career choices as they progress through their learning journeys.

Education Scotland has also published a set of resources ( https://education.gov.scot/improvement/practice-exemplars/Learning%20pathways:%20Senior%20Phase%20design ) to support practitioners, employers, young people and parents in understanding the different pathways available. These resources can be used by those involved in the planning and delivery of the senior phase school curriculum to understand the flexibility of learning pathways and the extent to which these can be tailored to meet the individual needs of young people, aiding their journey towards a positive destination.

To support and enable young people in considering their entry into the workplace, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) has developed a comprehensive range of career information and guidance (CIAG) services ( https://www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/what-we-do/scotlands-careers-services/our-careers-service-in-schools/ ).

Colleges have the responsibility to produce prospectuses to provide young people with information on the courses and subjects they offer. This material and this offer is expected to be promoted to young people as part of the school-college partnerships emerging within the DYW programme.

There are a number of ways in which employers can engage with NHS Health Scotland’s services that provide support on mental health in the workplace. These services sit within the employer focussed Healthy Working Lives Programme.

The following information is provided by NHS Health Scotland.

Training

The Healthy Working Lives Programme is responsible for the design and delivery of a suite of training courses on mental health. These courses are delivered by trainers (primarily Healthy Working Lives advisers) located in territorial health boards, or in other external organisations and by managers that have attended the ‘train the trainer’ course and wish to deliver training within their own organisations.

The figures given in the following table reflect the number of employers (interpreted as number of organisations) that have participated in one of the training courses. Please note the figures do not reflect the number of delegates attending and in many cases an employer is represented by more than one individual.

Enquiries to Healthy Working Lives National Adviceline

Healthy Working Lives advisers also directly support employers by providing advice through the National Adviceline. The figures given below are for specific enquiries on mental health, however, many more enquiries are received where mental health is one of a number of issues raised through an enquiry.

Healthy Working Lives website

The recently launched website ( https://www.healthyworkinglives.scot/Pages/default.aspx ) includes specific support for employers on workplace mental health.

The Review of the implementation of the Career Education Standard (3-18), the Work Placement Standard and Guidance on School/Employer Partnerships (May 2017) by Education Scotland found that most schools they visited had developed their links with local and national employers in order to provide meaningful work-based learning opportunities for young people.

The DYW industry led Regional Groups are playing an integral part in establishing school-employer partnerships. Across Scotland, all 21 DYW Regional Groups are building a bridge between education and employers through work inspiration activity, work placements and establishing long-term strategic partnerships. We are beginning to see Secondary schools harnessing opportunities presented through industry partnerships. The DYW Regional Groups are working closely with key partners to develop a shared understanding of the needs of employers and schools in each region.

We are currently working with the network of DYW Regional Groups and Local Authority DYW leads on how best to capture progress on school employer partnerships that recognises the range of productive partnerships that exist.

Education Scotland (ES) monitors the effectiveness of careers guidance provided by SDS, schools and colleges on behalf of Scottish Government. The monitoring takes the form of external reviews based on the Framework for External Quality Review of Skills Development Scotland (SDS) Careers Information, Advice and Guidance, created in partnership by ES, SDS and the Scottish Government.

Each review is led by an Inspector of Education and supported by a team of other HMI colleagues and associate assessors from SDS. The outcomes of the reviews are taken into the local authority Continuous Improvement Action Plan which sets out how the teams plan to address the main points for action and the expected outcomes. 18 months after the initial review, ES revisit the local authority team to monitor progress against the main points for action.

In addition, How Good Is Our School?4 and How Good Is Our College? Support schools and colleges to continually evaluate and improve the career services they offer students and make judgements on how well learners are developing their career management skills.

Last year the pilot of the Discovering Your Potential (DYP) employability programme, led by a consortium of Barnardo's, Action for Children and the Princes Trust, was launched with the aim of supporting 270 young care experienced people. The programme actually delivered mentoring support, training and work experience to 326 young people, 130 of whom are still receiving mentoring support from the partners of the Consortium. To date 45 young people have moved into jobs, 69 into further education and 8 into other advanced training. The Consortium's plans for DYP in its second year, are to provide support, training and work experience to a further 270 young people.

The DYP programme is in addition to the support provided year on year to young care leavers through other SG funded employability programmes, such as: Community Jobs Scotland; Activity Agreements; and the Inspiring Scotland 14:19 Fund.

There are 9 organisations that deal with mentoring within the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning and Empowering Communities (CYPFEI / ALEC) Fund. The CYPFEI aspect of the Fund aims to improve outcomes for children, young people and their families, improving parenting capacity and family support.

The following table provides mentoring data for these organisations. The data includes both ‘children’ and young people.