Question reference: S5W-34872
- Asked by: Alasdair Allan, MSP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 29 January 2021
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Current status: Initiated by the Scottish Government. Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 1 February 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many new and enhanced opportunities it will create through the Young Person’s Guarantee, and how it will track young people participating in these opportunities.
Answer
Following the launch of the Young Person’s Guarantee on 5 November 2020 I can confirm that through our additional investment of £60 million in 2020-21 we have provided funding for around 18,000 new and enhanced existing opportunities to support young people in Scotland, building on our substantial existing investment in education, employability and skills. These opportunities will include up to:
- 11,000 opportunities through local authorities;
- 5,000 places in college;
- 1,400 new apprentice pathways; and
- Support for 1,300 vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds through third sector provision from Inspiring Scotland and the Princes Trust/Barnados/Action for Children consortium which provides support for care experienced young people.
Suppressing COVID-19 and ensuring the safety of our communities and Scotland’s workforce rightly remains our priority but we understand the economic impact this is having particularly on the ability of many employers to recruit.
Despite the ongoing restrictions, we are continuing to work closely with our delivery partners to maximise the number of young people being supported into these opportunities and to enable local partnerships to respond flexibly to meet the needs of young people during this challenging time. This has meant for example more emphasis being placed on providing virtual skills training and mental health support during this time.
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.
We are working with Skills Development Scotland, HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions to examine ways we can improve data sharing to enhance reporting of the Participation Measure and better understand what activity young people are engaged in.
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. This includes personalised employment support and retraining for those who have been made unemployed or are at risk of redundancy due to the pandemic. This is in addition to our already significant investment in Education, Employability and Skills.