 Yng Ngôlogly eraill y cyflym Приran Cymhau through the 21st During Education Skills Committee very listened to in 2013. I remind everyone to turn their mobile phones and other devices to silence so that they don't disrupt the broadcasting of the meeting. We have no apologies today, however, Mary Phee has to attend other committee business and we are believing at some point during the course of the morning. o blaenwys yn hoffi'r Cadwifer KPW-Wadamatol. D processarion, cirfer, ond yn gweithio â amhalion, bynnag mae o amhal carefuln amliynyddiant huwg opahog ac maen nhw'n bo depictedau ar y biasiat bellhyddau i ni yn y suyu chyfeisiwr clrddeddol i Gweithrein Llywodraeth i, o maen uch chi'n seamsaidd yn gweld eu chi ddaith y byddiant? Wrth gwrs, bob hi'n edrych, gan y Cymru associatedd Dr James Russell, director of career information advice and guidance, and Sharon Kelly, head of operations from Skills Development Scotland, and also Alan Armstrong, strategic director and Joan Mackay, assistant director from Education Scotland. I ask members to indicate if they would like to come in on any of the questions, but I would like to open today's proceedings and just to ask them for a brief key points in the area that you would like to mention to the committee and if I go to Mr Russell first. Good morning. Skills Development Scotland pleased to provide an update to the progress that we are making as part of the partnership work into young people's pathways and improving outcomes for young people. We have quite a significant contribution to the senior phase vocational pathways recommendation one through the development and delivery of foundation apprenticeships and through the delivery and recommendation two of the career information advice and guidance services. We have extensive partnership working with our colleagues here from Education Scotland and through the network and delivering our expectations against each of those recommendations. Thank you. Mr Armstrong? Thank you, yes. We welcome the opportunity to update the committee on the progress we are making in taking forward the developing young workforce recommendations on the career education standard and our contribution to the senior phase pathways work. We lead on several aspects of the schools-based recommendations and we work closely with a broad range of partners to support the wider aspects of the complete programme. Education Scotland was asked to work with SDS, local authorities and employer representatives to develop the career education standard. That standard was published back in 2015 and we continue to work very closely in partnership with a whole range of people and now the DYW new employer groups to support schools and their partners to implement the entitlements for young people that are within the standard. Children and young people were directly involved in helping us to develop the process in back in 2015 and their input shaped the standard at that time but it continues to shape the ways that we go about making sure it's available in schools. The standard recognises the journey that young people are on as they learn about the world of work right from the early years, right the way through to the senior phase and it sets out what children will learn but also crucially what relevant adults in their lives will, what they can do and what they will do to support them in that learning and really the aim is to make sure that young people are better informed about their abilities because we know that young people live in this complex and changing environment and that the old linear pathways through school can no longer serve their needs so the standard and DYW in general actually is in the way it's being implemented we're seeing the complexity playing out at school level as changes are made in the curriculum and that really means the offer that a school makes to its own young people and we see that commitment and appetite from the staff in these schools and their partners to expand the offer and this is leading to the emergence of some innovative practice I'm sure that we can touch on. We also welcomed skills of Scottish College for Educational Leadership into Education Scotland earlier this year and we immediately started to work with them actively to embed the developing young workforce agenda into their complete suite of leadership programmes it was there before in the excellence in headship but now we're working to make sure that they go right across. One final point I think on inspection and review the evidence we've gathered from across inspection and review shows we're making really steady progress with the career education standard and with DYW and some schools are moving more quickly now and others are picking up pace but what we're seeing is that all are progressing and most secondary schools are developing these learner pathways more flexibly increasing the partnership working and that means consortia arrangements often between schools it means bringing local businesses in working with local businesses and community partners providing that wide range of options so it means in summary I think we do the welcome opportunity to explore that with you this morning and to highlight some of the creative practices that we've seen. We have some broad topical areas to cover today I'm not guaranteeing we'll stick to those but we're going to start with vocational pathways and I'd like to invite Rona Mackay. Can I start please by asking you what progress has been made towards measuring and publishing information on vocational pathways alongside the other school performance indicators? I don't know who would like to start. It's quite a mixed picture at the moment we're working with data from a range of sources so for instance we look at the data that SFC has to tell us the trajectory and how that you know how the pickup of vocational pathways is going. We haven't got all of that in one place yet so that's very much a work in progress something that we know we need to bring together. We're doing a piece of work on that testing that out at school level at the moment and over the course of this year we'll be doing that so we'll be able to come back with some more information on that. Can you give us an idea of timescale of you say you haven't got it complete what sort of Well I think we're timing it with the the life of the programme we had to allow us get a point where we were seeing some significant progress at school level we're now beginning to see that and through inspection for instance we are picking up now the story and the narrative of the change what we're not there yet is having the collation of data in the one place that it's easy to make sense of it so in terms of timescale I'm guessing it's going to take us this latter part of the programme to get to that stage and as I see we've just started some of that work exploring that work with all our partners just now. Okay thank you. Mr Armstrong you talked about the pace of change and rolling out vocational pathways again can you perhaps maybe quantify that a wee bit for us and let us know how that's picking up and you know how it's progressing? I think I'm very comfortable with the progress that we're making this is a significant change the senior phase as it's conceptualised at the moment is radically different to what was in place before and that means that schools have had to take quite a significant time to look very closely at what they were doing how they were doing it looking at the young people in their school and co-designing what the offer should be and for that that also means that they've then to quite often find partners link up with businesses think of new and wider ranges of courses to offer what we're seeing now is the the senior phase becoming much less of a of a linear pathway kind of linear progression which would have been the case before curriculum for excellence where young people tended to move through standard grade foundation general and credit then higher then advanced higher and then on with young people then dropping off so that after s4 20 stopped coming to school or went somewhere with that that has been changed now from that linear to much more of what you might call a web or a matrix of an offer across s4 s5 and s6 and in the best cases we are seeing s4 and s5 and s6 coming together by the school and it organising young people in that way to open up the opportunities for s4 s5 and s6 to choose from a larger menu of courses and options now we're seeing that in a large number of schools what we're also then seeing is other schools picking up on this we're doing a lot of activity in that area in terms of collecting and sharing ideas working with networks and then helping through social media through our web share some of the examples that are coming through so we're seeing activity from the people who are forward more forward thinking who have got a bit of traction in this helping some of the others it's an uneven playing field just now and that's exactly as we would expect in such a fundamental change and and do you see that moving on quite rapidly you know to the as I mentioned my opening remarks the inspection gives me great heart the last set of inspection advice from over last session gives me great heart and some of the examples some of which I think we're in our submission of the commitment to schools to be looking at this not just as a function but as a genuine hearts and mind reality that this is about the young people in their school at that time and again that's a slightly different approach where schools are now realising that your s4 s5 and s6 cohort changes every year because your new s4 comes in your s6 goes out and people leave therefore you have to look at it again and what you're offering so your course choices are not static and will continue to grow and I guess just to reiterate that from a foundation apprenticeship point of view it's important to note that the first two years of the foundation apprenticeship programme was about building capacity in the system so it was a pathfinder programme at that time to support the challenges and differences around curriculum planning, partnership working, bringing all of those players together in a local area to ensure the success of that programme so this is the first year that we're starting to see the positive outcomes from the 2016 cohort which was cohort one as that's progressing and again to reiterate the point that Alan's made about the learning from that so we published a report recently around the progress in learning from foundation apprenticeships which enables us to start building on what's working and sharing that with more partners as we move through the expansion of that programme towards 2019. Can I maybe ask a wee bit about targets and why different targets have been reported for foundation apprenticeships in recent years and do you think too much attention has been given to foundation apprentices at the expense of other occasional pathways or do you think the balance is correct but it's mainly just the disparity in the different targets I'm interested in yeah I think the balance is correct it's got to be right for the circumstances that the schools operate within and the network that they have around about them and the delivery partnerships that they have in order to successfully do that and we're continuing to expand the opportunities for lead partners that previously it was colleges which led to that partnership local authorities are now doing that and the commissioning for next year has also opened up to independent training providers so I think the focus is right it's a significant change programme in the curriculum it requires all of those individuals and parties to be able to come together and be able to deliver those and that's a change for employers it's a change for colleges and schools also and to the foundation apprenticeship target I believe there has been references made to differing targets I just have to make it very clear that through our relationship with the Scottish Government SDS has always been and continues to be focused on the availability of 5000 opportunities for foundation apprenticeships in Scotland 2019 and that hasn't changed for us at all how's that target reached so part of the development of the foundation apprenticeship programme has been its industry led and as DYW recommended compares us to the top performing OECD countries and we look at countries like Germany and Switzerland where we've taken a lot of the great practice and the development of the foundation apprenticeship frameworks working with SQA Education Scotland it was understanding what capacity we had within the curriculum in order to be able to deliver that so how do you the challenge is always how do you implement a change programme providing those opportunities to many people as possible without being unrealistic about what you're doing and when you consider that if you S5 is the starting point for foundation apprenticeships and the 5000 by 2019 gives us around about 12 to 15 percent of the S5 cohort having the opportunity to be able to do that alongside other formal senior phase vocational pathways and vocational learning programmes okay thanks and just one final question on this what steps are being taken to ensure that vocational pathways are as valued or equivalent value to academic pathways how you're managing to bridge that gap absolutely so certainly from sds and the work that we do at every level in our engagement with our partners and our customers and stakeholders we are very aware that we have to we believe in parity esteem for both academic and vocational programmes and the challenge for us is that because we commissioned those apprenticeship programmes it looks like we have a specific focus around apprenticeship rather than vocational and that's absolutely not the case and so what we see is work-based learning programmes has been an enriched learning route that adapts to different learning styles for young people and so absolutely we are promoting equal opportunities so from careers advisors and schools and undertaking group work through our universal services and supporting young people and they are responsible for providing the information and advice about all of the routes and pathways that exist for young people and there's a parity of esteem in all of them and we work you know this is all about choice for young people and in order to make an informed choice and that's the focus of our service absolutely from a cig point of view and that you have to know and understand what all those opportunities look like so we have quite a structured programme of interventions across each of the year groups in a face-to-face basis with young people which explores those routes and pathways and the opportunities exist either in the local economy or in Scotland generally through the regional skills assessments and the skills demand statements that we have and then through our work with teachers through education Scotland we've developed quite a lot of capacity building activities career-long professional learning resources for teachers which focus around labour market information so introducing what that looks and feels like what it means for you when you're teaching in your classrooms there's curriculum inserts there and the work that we do with parents with schools so certainly in schools we're involved with those schools in planning what the parental engagement looks like and we deliver interventions with parents across all of the year groups as well as having that opportunity of one-to-one support with them during those significant subject choice times so it's about ensuring that everybody that's involved in influencing and informing young people's choices and decisions because we only play one part of that and that we furnish them with the information and advice that they need in order to help have that career conversation as we would reference it. Thank you, that's helpful. I'm going to bring in Ms Lamont. I just wanted to pursue a couple of points that have been raised there. First of all, Ms Ramstrong you said that young people have a larger menu from which to choose but the evidence we received last week from Professor Scott was that in fact there is a restriction on subject choice and the number of subjects a young person can choose so how does that square with the idea that you've got a larger menu when the evidence from last week was that was narrowing and constricting? Yes, there's all the limit to the number of courses any young person can follow because of the hours in the school day and the thing but my reference there was to the range of options that a young person has so that's moving away from what you might call traditional subjects into words more skills for work courses and more national certificates and more national progression awards opening up that menu of options in there and what we're seeing is that menu being available to young people and the distinct motivation young people are finding from studying foundation or pentaships or working with employers in over the S4 or S5 or S6 so schools are very creative in the ways that they arrange their option choices for young people and sometimes if a school has let's see six or seven options for young people within that for some young people one option could actually mean two short courses in schools for workers or something in there so there's a rich way that young people can... So the larger menu is you're getting a series of wee topics within a year rather than one substantial subject which is not quite the same thing I wonder if you've looked at Professor Scott's research and will maybe perhaps it would be worthwhile maybe asking you to reflect on that further and maybe coming back to the committee and that was a very substantial issue but a direct contradiction to what you're saying frankly in terms of access can I ask about the issue of face-to-face support? Can you define what face-to-face means? Yes so we have two approaches and maybe bring Sharon Kelly in on this through our universal service delivery which is face-to-face in a group setting and also on a one-to-one basis. The size of the group? So in classroom sizes so around about 30 people. So you're defining face-to-face as maybe 30 young people in front of you? Well it is a face-to-face service so it's combined with the one-to-one support so we have from primary 7S1 all the way through to S6 defined engagements with young people on a face-to-face basis either through group or through one-to-one support. So what proportion of young people could expect to have advice in smaller than a group a group face-to-face which is really just a classroom setting what proportion of them would have access to one-to-one advice? So in the broad general education phase we have 100% entitlement for young people really all young people are entitled to the group sessions in S12 and 3 but also the one-to-one face-to-face support that they receive at their subject choice. So every young person gets to speak to somebody about their subject choice? Yes. That's it but the rest is really just as most people would just say that's a classroom setting. The other thing I wanted just to ask you talked about I think both Mr Armstrong yourself talked about the networks that were offered to schools. How do you stop that reinforcing inequality? Because some schools will have access to loads of businesses, people who perhaps within the parents groups have businesses of their own have access to those opportunities. Other schools might find that more difficult because of the pressures that are under. It seems very unfair if we through the system have got off an opportunity of reinforcing that inequality and that ability to bring somebody in. Is there something to be argued that these resources should be made available to all schools rather than the young people being at the mercy of what would be very local networks? I'm not quite sure what you mean by local networks. What was said was that schools are encouraged to develop their own networks, bring businesses in, offer young people opportunities. That's going to be easier in an urban setting, in a more prosperous area with perhaps parents of access to all sorts of contacts and so on than perhaps in a rural area or in an area where there are fewer businesses functioning. Therefore the schools opportunities to develop a network are going to be very different depending on where that school is. How do you stop that reinforcing of the disadvantages already in the school system? I can begin that. We're acutely aware of the rural, for instance, and remote issues. What we are seeing actually is a huge amount of creativity around what people are being able to do. When we began the work and developing the young workforce, we didn't go to the urban schools and we didn't go to these obvious settings where networks might be the accessible and more easy. For instance, we went to Dumfries and Galloway, first of all, we went to Argyllin Butte and we worked out on the ground with them what would work in these settings. That continued to influence the work that we're still doing today in partnership with SDS in terms of any of the offers that we're putting together. Important to know that some of the thinking, for instance, had gone on in Dumfries and Galloway around what they called at that point the bridge project. We have followed that through because that began to influence the thinking about how we helped and supported schools. The evidence on the ground is that in particular schools where there are real challenges, they are the ones often who are the most innovative and creative and have come up with the solutions. That's what we're tracking. We've also seen the model in the Western Isles as an island authority who got going on a lot of this very early on 2008-2009 and have tracked that model. We see other authorities learning from Dumfries and Galloway. I have several other examples. I'm not sure if you want to come back. I accept that that's being done. My argument more is that if you're saying it's about school and its networks, even within urban areas, the capacity and access to contacts, the people who are really good friends of the school are going to be different in different areas. How do you mitigate that? We now have in play the DIY employer groups. That took a bit of a while to set up that part of the structure. They are now all fully operational. We are beginning to see the impact of these groups in terms of making the links with schools, in terms of support for businesses. Sometimes, in rural and remote communities, there is more strength than there because of the local knowledge of, for instance, small and medium enterprise businesses or one of businesses, where there's a far more of an interest on an individual level. It's quite a mixed picture. I think we have moved away from an assumption that urban settings will have the best access to the opportunities. I actually think it's within urban settings and rural and urban area fragile. Remote areas are going to be quite different as well. The idea that school has to make contacts and those contacts come in and create a network is going to create problems in a school where there are perhaps fewer families with access. It means that it's everything else in education if you're looking for work experience. If you're sitting in a school with lots of people who have run their own businesses or whatever parents, you have to create opportunities that other schools don't have. I just wondered how you mitigate the inequality there and rather reinforce it. I can give some examples of that. If we think about the STEM agenda, science, technology, engineering and maths, again we're very focused on making sure that there may not be the most relevant employers at the point you're making in that local area. One or two things there, we have a network of development officers who's for science now and who's role is to connect across primary schools through the raised programme funded by Sir Ian Wood. That's a pilot at the moment and these development officers are looking for ways to connect in a regional level rather than school by school, a regional level to make sure that children in primary school have access to industry connections either by visits to the school or by going out on visits and that teachers have professional learning. We also have some work going on with the science centres who are helping them with their outreach work to make sure that they can address some of the gaps in terms of understanding of parents around about the STEM agenda and parents and family and family learning and that goes well beyond the local area of a city but actually takes much more of a regional approach. Finally, we also, through the glow infrastructure in schools, we provide access to employers, to industry employers, to people who work in the digital sector for example, people who work in cyber security they can have what we call glow meats which are live with a classroom in there so that's trying to help that geographical sparsity that you may find in there and that helps the school to take something from the national offer or regional offer or indeed from their own local employers. I have a number of members that want to come in with supplementaries but I'll take Ms Vee first. Thank you, convener. It was just a brief follow-up question on foundation apprenticeships. I wonder, Mr Russell, if you could give us the up-to-date figure of how many foundation apprenticeships are currently in place and whether you believe you're on target to meet the target of 5,000? The figure for the last academic year we set out to have 2,600 opportunities for that and we are currently recruiting for that so we don't have that starter figure so because it starts at the start of the academic year but that is certainly something that will be published in this part of our report in the member to ensure that the recruitment for that programme has taken place. So you don't know how many there are currently, no? How many were there last year? 1,345 it was. So you wanted to recruit another 1,300? So we went from 345 to 1,245 the year after. 2,600 is planned for this academic year and then 5,000 for next year for the opportunities. 5,000 for next year and additional 5,000 or up to 5,000? No, it'll be 5,000 starts for next year. 5,000 starts for next year. So the opportunities will be available, 5,000 opportunities will be available. And you believe that it's achievable? Well I think what we've got to do is look at and I guess picks up on some of this point as well about schools not having to be responsible to find those networks themselves. So a lot of the investment at the start of the foundation apprenticeship pathfinder programmes and currently is developing hub delivery models so that it brings employers so we use our networks through SDS and through our partners industry leadership groups, the Scottish apprenticeship advisory board to influence employers to become part of those delivery hubs so that it is not schools that are consistently trying to find those opportunities and relationships. So those delivery hubs bring all of the partners involved in the delivery of that together. It's about shared learning, we have community practice to embed that and we would consider that the growth from year 1 or cohort 1 at the 345 to the 1,200 has been over 200% increase. We've then seen 100% increase as we move to this year and for us to move from the recruitment this year to the 5,000 opportunities it reduces that to around about 90% and I guess through this change programme everybody would be familiar, I would assume, with exponential curves and change programmes so you get the foundations in place, you build the networks, the partnerships, you understand what works and what doesn't and then that gives you an opportunity actually to scale at a pace that's different from trying to build the foundations in at that point in time. Okay thank you thank you okay thank you Mr Mundell. Thank you convener I was just quite astonished actually to hear Education Scotland hold the bridge project up as an example of how to tackle rural inequality because I mean I hear several teachers for just as a starting point and lots of people within education in Dumfries and Galloway question what the project's about, they feel it replicates the work already being done by the regional college and it doesn't get over the fundamental issue which is how pupils at outlying secondary schools in Sankirk, in Langham get over the fact that it's an 80 minute round trip to go to another building in what is a large urban centre within a rural region, it doesn't tackle the actual point and I wonder what is being done to make sure that the same educational opportunities are available to young people across Scotland regardless of where they live. Can I come back on the bridge project what was useful when we visited Dumfries and Galloway was the thinking and the thinking was about all of these challenges and they had begun creating another physical space in an urban centre get over those challenges. I'm not endorsing the creating of a physical space that's not my point my point was that a huge amount they were exactly dealing with the the issue and the question that you're asking so that was very helpful to us in terms of the advice we had to for instance include in the career education standard the work placement standard and the challenges that we're talking about here so that's why you brought up the bridge to one of my colleagues as an example of how we deliver services in a rural area but effectively the bridge is another campus within an urban setting that is inaccessible to many people in a largely rural region I don't personally find that a credible solution to these challenges okay and I just go back to say to you we went to explore the thinking around about that as we did in the western Isles what thinking had led to that so I'm not going to comment on I mean on how the bridge is viewed locally so well I think that then comes back to some of the evidence that's come in ahead of this session for example where connect say while developing the young workforce is embraced by many as a concept the reality is somewhat different from the vision you know except that that's but bringing up you know a project that is effectively just another urban focused solution for rural area you know it is just another example of that where you know we talk about having parity across the country but when it comes to putting solutions in place we go back to the same ideas that we already have in place that don't actually address the fundamental challenges well I think we're seeing more than that idea and I think that's what's emerging across the country and we don't in any way deny that there are challenges with rural communities what we are seeing is an increased and innovative use of digital we were involved in that when we were working with young folk for instance in Argyllin but who had come from vast distances just to participate in the workshop sessions that we did we talked in these sessions to their parents we talked to the teachers involved and importantly of course the young folk and what did work for them so part of our work as we go on is working with SDS is to support the creation of offers that make the world of work accessible and understanding about that for instance to young people more available on an online way as well as locally so that works ongoing the other I think I come back to reiterating what I said about we're seen at local level schools yes have challenges but they are coming up with solutions that are creative and responsive to where they are I wouldn't deny that schools are coming up with solutions you know that they've been forced to do that but again I'm concerned to hear that somehow digital is the answer for people who live remotely you know but we're seeing a huge focus for example on the bridge at you in an area that's already you've got a disproportionate offering on that menu can be a decline areas but I'll leave it there for now thank you I think your point's been well made Mr Mundell I'm sure I got an opportunity to come back in later on can I bring Mr Scott in please thank you and my apologies for being late to convener if you had to find a way to say stop speaking to me on the phone to a shuttle constituent at five to ten on a on a Wednesday morning I wonder if I could ask Joe Mackay about work experience because the pretty strong message that many of us got when the committee visited the Anson high school in Lerwick was both secondary three secondary two in other words the early stages of secondary school pupils saying we would like more work experience options so as to make best judgment about the courses we take given the narrowing of the choices that are available in the senior phase how does education Scotland view that one and have you got some how do you help I suppose schools in widening out that the choice given the the challenges of finding both employers and also space in the school day to allow children to undertake more work experience options yeah and that was an issue that young people raised with us in in all the preparation for the development of the career education standard and then that we did the work placement standard at the exact same time because obviously there was that correlation a heavy correlation between these now the work placement standard effectively is for youngsters in the senior phase with options earlier than that to come back to that but the important thing about the career education standard was recognising that ask from young people that they understand more about the world of work and of course that was one of the main things you know main themes in the city and woods commission so that was an interesting thing to tackle how do you get young people to have an awareness and I'll give you an example of of a young person and it comes back to the digital of our scene we've just been studying such and such a thing in in geography we've done x amount of hours on it we we know we're doing that in order to pass an exam and we want to know when they were standing holding their smartphones we want to know where that has any meaning out there and that was a view echoed by children all across secondary and we also saw some of that in in primary with the youngsters and so the whole point about the career education standard was I did built into their everyday experiences the connections so helping teachers to make the subjects they're teaching today more relevant to the world of work so that children were getting the connections you heard James Russell talk about lesson inserts so for instance teachers that chemistry teacher a geography teacher today should be able to find something delivered by a colleague so that gives a five ten minute insert to add into a lesson today for instance which gives them access to somebody talking about the subject whether it's geography whether it's somebody working in weather so they get that five minute insert on the discussions but the important thing was to develop and I am coming back to digital what youngsters do find out a lot of their information from how could they access that so my word of work continues to evolve in response to that but also really importantly career education standard asks that very real connections be made with actual employer's work the industry in the local area and that is what we are seeing we are seeing really interesting development in early years we're seeing it in primary where youngsters are directly involved with employers either employers coming in or then themselves visiting workplace places and what we should see is and that is what we are beginning to see if you take the bits and pieces that have emerged it's a progression in children's experience and exposure and understanding of the world for us isn't it I mean this is specifically about work experience choices for kids particularly in s12 s3 so they had more things to relate to that would help and take choices at the senior phase and I think the pattern we've seen across Scotland is it and understandably so it's pretty patchy but Ian would very strong on this we need more kids doing more work experience earlier on I mean you presumably agree with that principle absolutely and that is very much what we're supporting schools to do you know so for instance in s1 to s3 we have the real opportunity just now with the STEM strategy which you know there's a fundamental thing that if the if the physics teacher and the biology teacher and the maths teacher aren't working together and offering youngsters opportunities in s1 to s3 then you know there's something we need to do there for them to understand that interplay and what we are seeing is the schools who have gone ahead in all of this we are seeing you know for instance in a unit in chemistry somebody from the local distillery coming in my memory of chemistry is pretty weak just now but coming in to teach part of that unit alongside the teachers so that youngsters are getting that kind of exposure and so that is all there going on in the mix thank you okay i'm i'm moving on to theme 2 um which is careers information guidance and advice i'd like to invite my smith thank you convener mr armstrong can i just refer you to the submission that you made to the committee where you point to the enhanced career information and advice guidance etc which you say has been in place in secondary schools since 2016 17 and that includes the earlier intervention for young people at primary seven s1 and in the transition stages in s2 s3 could you provide us with some evidence to support this because the other thing that professor scott told us last week's committee in his troll of every single secondary school across the country was that there were very few schools who were providing a very comprehensive and good quality set of guidance for subject choice and these two things i don't think quite fit together so could you give us your uptake on this i think is um johan mentioned there just where we are with the implementation of the career education standards and the understanding of teachers themselves subject specific teachers in a secondary school is to the ways that their curriculum and their subject relates now to the world of work then that is some work in progress with teachers themselves so they understand when they're teaching they can change the context of teaching for you for young people so they do get that understanding and the teachers and the young people get the understanding of the relevance once we see that getting more embedded in the schools where further ahead in this we can see this happening and that opens up the the thinking of the teachers and of the school as to the range of courses that might be possible and so rather than doing what might call traditional subjects in geography they might be looking at tourism they might be looking at land based studies rather than some biology or chemistry now that getting that embedded in the moment there takes time we know from the review of the career education standard in spring of 2017 it was launched in autumn 2015 so after 18 months we had a pledge to review the career education standards themselves to make sure they were fit for purpose and to make sure that they were having some kind of traction that review pointed to the fact that the senior staff in schools were fully aware of the career education standards what they were aiming to do what the potential was but it had not yet fully reached the teachers and the classroom and I think the careers information and guidance inspections are also showing this that that's the next stage for that to filter into the classroom sorry mr armstone can I just interrupt you there professor scott is making two points first is that he believes that there is diminished subject choice particularly in s4 and he's arguing that that's now going to impact on s5 and I have to say I think his evidence is pretty strong on that fact and the committee's agreed to look at that further the second point that he's making is that the youngsters themselves and parents are not being adequately informed about what is on offer in schools because as I say he's done this very comprehensive study of handbooks and you know the information that's disseminated from schools to the young people and he's making the point that actually um the young people are not always very aware because the information is not being sent to them my point to you mr armstone is it you seem to be arguing that um there is enhanced career information professor scott is saying quite the reverse there is but perhaps not getting that not we're not seeing it as widely spread in why is that because just because of the stage we are at in the implementation because I mentioned there in spring 2017 we we know that that um the career education standard was well understood by senior staff and not in the classrooms but we did check and schools intentions for last academic session were to do much more work in the classroom so that is beginning to penetrate into that work and from that the the more detailed informative work will um and parent handbooks and discussion with parents at parents evening and with children that's how it all flows so there's a sequence of activity to filter down from the senior management to the teachers with their understanding to the young people and then that then has to have to find itself it find its way into the advice for parents so if we were to look at the school inspections overall are you telling us that there is more information that the inspection process is reporting that there is better information being disseminated to our young people when professor scott's evidence is suggesting that there's a very long way to go is that what we would find if we looked through no what we would find it in inspection um is our young people on on that right pathway into s3r 4 and what was the quality of the advice that they received and what we would see in their journal say there is that the the advice they're receiving at the moment is variable yeah I think if I remember rightly professor scott was talking to a review here done of school websites and school handbooks and he's right in that I mean we did a review to um just midway through last year and and it was disappointing it wasn't beginning to show up you know this range of options that we described at the beginning so you know that's a piece of work that we are reminding schools to do but it is often the case that the handbook on the website unfortunately a key tool in informing most of us and parents in the community is often the last thing to be attended to so what we found was that the websites were not yet reflecting what we were hearing and we knew was happening from instance from our development work so so there is a there is a point about you know their role if you want in promoting what they're doing now sometimes they're still in a state of development so that is an issue but but the other thing I supposed to say and I think James would probably pick up on this is that the earlier the formal earlier offer from sds and the changed focus as a result of the post-word recommendations and what's going on now has seen a change and I will put on the table you know we're requiring quite a lot of culture change in schools to to make all of this work so for instance um and I say this carefully there might have been a degree of you know distance from senior management level in a secondary school to what sds were doing it might have been seen as an add-on the career person comes in does this and goes away and and we knew that we knew that attitudinally was sitting there what inspection has shown over time is that the response of head teachers for instance to their school partnership agreement with sds which again sat on the side it was something they did that's entering into the mainstream of a secondary schools body of improvement work and the feedback and again correct me I think I'm right is that um the response we're getting from head teachers when we're working with them is that they see the sds offer that area offer as much more meaningful they're making better use of it in schools they're using the data now from sds to inform what they're doing and importantly they're using often one careers person in a far more um in a better way to support the rest of the staff so it's not just guidance staff what we might have seen but all of the staff to develop their understanding of the links between what they're doing in the classroom and and and the wider economy so it sounds like a catch but it is a work in progress and yes i'm not surprised that professor scott found that on website right thank you for that would you acknowledge education scotland that this is actually a very serious concern because mr armstrong you said in your opening remarks that this is a more complex landscape than ever before when youngsters come to make their choices and there are you know there are different pathways and that in my view is a good thing but youngsters have to know in detail exactly what these options are and how they are what the qualifications are how they're examined etc and it strikes me at the moment this is a mess in terms of the information that is going out to youngsters it is not clear cut and it's certainly leaving them in my view very short as young people who are obviously the future skills of this country it's not a mess i would say that it needs to be more informed by for example labour market intelligence and our reviews of careers information advice and guidance have actually turned it to be very positive in being very good some excellent evaluations across the local authorities over the past years but within that the areas that need to be worked on most is is the obviously the implementation of the enhanced careers education offer from SDS but also that the teachers and schools use of labour market information that's critical i think to actually helping schools and understand just exactly what needs to happen so as John said it's work in progress and certainly an area that we know needs to improve okay mr Greer thank you convener to continue this theme i'm interested in skills development scotland senior face survey i'm glad that you do it i've got a couple of specific questions on it but just before that in terms of your submission it was very much focused on young people's experience of careers advisors could you just briefly explain if the survey is broader than that or if it's very much focused on experience of a careers advisor in school so it absolutely is we set out to listen to our customers voice as part of the cig service which we've been doing for many years prior to the career education standard and dyw coming in so we as well as the senior face survey we also undertake the point of delivery customer feedback as well so after group sessions and following one to one sessions as well it used to be a school leaver survey up until last year so it was only leavers who left who we then gathered feedback on the services that they had received by sds i guess in our evolution and the sophistication of our systems and tracking of young people and we're now able to ask those questions of young people based on the services that they actually received so we remind them that those services have been received because to the point earlier on part of this part of the delivery of career information advice and guidance services does not lie solely with sds it requires teachers engaged in that using the same methodology so a lot of the focus that we're doing is around building capacity for embedding career management skills into the curriculum so that there's a common thread that runs through what support a young person gets and the language that careers advisor uses with the support in the language that a teacher is also using so at the moment that survey absolutely is specifically focused on ciag services and themselves and part of our evolution as a partnership through the change team programmes and taking forward the career education standard is the consideration about how we use that mechanism actually because we reach three and a half thousand young people every year it's quite a significant cohort of individuals from senior phase how do we use that to start to focus on the broader career information advice and guidance that they are getting through the school system rather than just purely from sds because that really takes us to where what the career education standard has been trying to do is develop a network of individuals who are consistently providing the same or similar information using the same language to develop career management skills for informed decision making so that's certainly something that we're considering thanks that was useful to talk about the result last year specifically so nine out of ten young people found their careers advisor to be friendly and approachable that's fantastic that was my experience not that on go but that then drops to 70% who are actually happy with both their ability to access support and the support that they accessed have you drilled into that and found out why one in five young people have that gap in experience where they found the careers advisor friendly and approachable but clearly weren't happy with what they got yeah we have drilled into that so one of the things to understand about that senior phase survey is that that's the the national result that we submit as part of the report that we published last week when we described earlier on about the difference between the universal and targeted support so universal services are for all young people so it's an entitlement for every young person in school and that targeted support begins to come in around that needs based and the needs matrix that we have referenced and I know that that's picked up in the papers so there's a difference in terms of what customers or young people are actually receiving as part of that service and we don't widely publicise you know that that this is when you get targeted support and this is when you get universal support that's more about an individual and their circumstances working with the practitioner who's working with them in order to understand whether they do or they don't get targeted support so when we drill through that survey and the results for universal customers so those individuals who are maybe only receiving the face-to-face engagement or the subject choice one to one is startling different from those who are receiving targeted support and what we often find is that those young people who are receiving that universal service their satisfaction drops because they're not getting more but we are obviously limited in terms of the services that we're delivering we deliver against their expectations in our letter of guidance and also through the CIEG strategy so our resources are delivering what I feel is the right mixture of that delivery and what we learn from that is about how do we take that out to practitioners to manage expectations around the services that young people have and the support that they can access and actually supporting them to know that they can get continuous targeted support ongoing support if it's agreed and worked through with our careers advisor so if we identify a change in someone's circumstances we can offer that enhanced support so the satisfaction level increases by 10 percent when we look at the targeted cohort only so that's the kind of differences and that's part of our commitment in SDS to continuous improvement it's about how do we then inform or practice working with young people to manage expectations and be clear about the services and support they can receive. The entitlement to one-on-one discussions with advisors has been mentioned already do you survey are you aware of how many young people are themselves aware that they have that entitlement because this is something that's come up quite regularly with us in the informal sessions we've had with young people as well it's more formal evidence and submissions that very often they're unaware of what support they're entitled to. I think we put a lot of effort into trying to make sure that young people are aware and we use the opportunities that we have to work with our influencers so we make sure that parents are aware of that and we spend a lot of time in school through the school partnership agreements discussing what arrangements will make to try and raise awareness of that as well and young people have the opportunity not just to come along for a face-to-face if it's arranged in the way that we've described but they have drop-in sessions at school in most of our schools that they can come into for further help and sometimes it's from that that we identify actually that they do need to further help but we do do a lot more now I think to promote our services and we do that in a range of different ways so we're a multi-channel service so you'll see that information in schools hopefully in most of the schools that you maybe have visited or that you'll be aware of. We also have marketing materials that young people can access and their parents spend a lot of time talking to teachers about that as well because teachers can refer young people for support as well if they feel that that's appropriate so we do use a lot of different channels and opportunities to try and raise awareness and make sure that young people are aware of their entitlements and we also closely monitor that as a service to make sure that we are actually reaching those young people who really need the help most. That's very helpful but have you surveyed young people to find out what they're aware of in terms of their entitlements? I'll come back in a little bit on this then. There are entitlements set out in the career standard and I'm not sure if they're the same ones you're referring to but there are 10 of them there which includes critically the SDS of it. Just to give some idea of progress there we're absolutely pushing on all angles in terms of how children and young people are made aware that these entitlements exist in the first place and I think you've heard us say that there's a lot of work going on across schools and wider practitioners into the community and community learning development so that people are aware that these entitlements exist. What we're finding is for instance when you check on inspection evidence and as we speak today inspectors will be in secondary schools and they will be in primary schools and they will be asking in schools how aware are the young people in this establishment of these particular entitlements so that work will bring feedback towards mid-year and towards the end of the year but the other interesting thing is I think Alan mentioned career information and guidance reviews have taken place since 2014. We're now in the stage where some of the follow-up to the local authority, that's on a local authority basis, some of these follow-ups are beginning to happen and what we've seen for instance in one local authority where they got a reasonably good review but there was a recommendation in there about these entitlements, about teachers and parents being made aware and youngsters themselves and what we see there's just been a revisit and that came out very positively in terms of the awareness in that local authority of young people's access to their entitlement so again it's a work in progress. No that's useful and just one final question convener. Something that's come up quite regularly with us and feedback from young people is where there are choices that aren't really a choice for them where schools might have on paper expanded the number of options available to young people but for the individual young person they don't feel that it was ever really a choice that they were, I don't want to use the word rail road because I think it's quite a loaded term but they certainly felt like they were being directed towards one of a range of options and the others weren't really an option for them. What is the role for a careers advisor in that situation? Are careers advisors empowered to address that with schools? So I think we have a really important role to play around the curricular choices that people make particularly as you've heard already we have an input around either second or third year that's a face-to-face intervention but it's also an opportunity to speak to parents and teachers as well if we feel that that's appropriate and part of what we're trying to do whilst we're having these conversations is to look at what the options opportunities might be in the future and to help young people, their parents, teachers to look at that in the context and the circumstances in which that young person is learning but as part of that it may well be that they'll look at a career route or a career option and our job is to try and keep their options as open as possible at that stage and what they would then help to develop those career management skills in order to be able to understand how they might go about accessing that and as part of that conversation they may then identify particular qualifications that they require in order to pursue that career whether or not they're available in school is something that obviously we would discuss with them but our focus isn't necessarily around which subjects they're going to choose at that point in time it's a much broader conversation I think than that so in terms of our influence in a particular school where they might not be able to access something it would come back to some of the points that were made earlier about looking at what those opportunities might be more widely rather than within that actual school for them to access and what I was talking about is perhaps slightly different from that it's not that the options aren't available in the school it's perhaps that the options are available but the school or individuals within the school have essentially decided that those options are not available for that individual young person that's anecdotal feedback that we get really quite regularly would be fair to say and it's an extent of culture change that needs to happen there's still go back go back to my analogy of the linear progression in there parents are used to one system teachers are used to to that same system employers are used to that system and employers know their needs and what we need to do is to harmonise the two so that the exactly what it is that employers need by the way of the future workforce then actually influence the schools and helps to influence the choice choices young people make with their parents consent that actually university may not be the best thing for you it may actually be better to do a foundation apprenticeship more apprenticeship up to a degree level in the workplace by the time you're 21 22 or whatever for all the benefits that will have for the economy and for their own personal finances in there and actually learning on the job it can be incredibly valuable now that's a culture change that we're working with SDS on working with parents we've got strong links with the national platform of Scotland who are very keen to help us with this as well and it's a very very important element of the whole dyw by w agenda I'll come back to your original question the careers advisors in schools there are dedicated staff from SDS working within the schools and we negotiate that service through the school partnership agreement so they may not be empowered to change what's happening in relation to the curriculum but certainly they're seen as part of that school team and through the development of the career education standard and that collaboration it's raised the visibility of what that offer does in the contribution that it makes to the wider information advice and guidance so we are informing and influencing senior management teams and head teachers around what we are hearing from young people and I think the important point in all of this where there are experiences as you're describing there of people feeling that they're being driven into different environments for different reasons I think the value that comes from having a professionally qualified careers advisor at subject choice is exactly what it was intended to do it's almost a pause for a young person so it's impartial it challenges the decision making that they're making it understands what influences have actually got them to that point and it helps them work through the reality of what those decisions are going to look like as Sharon's described both now and in the long term thank you thank you can I ask a quick question about the survey that Mr Greer have been asking about is this 3573 youngsters responding to that how many were given the opportunity to respond so it's about 50,000 young people that we hold email valid email addresses for so we go through a very technical solution to make sure that they're real email addresses and we match that with those young people who are also registered in my world of work so we've seen quite a significant increase in that and so that it's round about 50,000 people who we have the email addresses for and that then that starts to represent about an 89 percent response rate and but which is statistically robust in terms of the results that we're putting out there okay thank you i'm coming miss goldruthan thank you I'd like to pick up James Russell on your point you just made in response to Ross Greer there with regard to careers based advisors in sorry careers advisors based in schools and you said they're not empowered to change course choices I just wonder if you could perhaps tell the committee on average how many hours a careers advisor might spend in a school in a week for example so that would depend we have a it depends on the number of pupils that are in that school and so for example in Sharon's area she has a school with 4,000 pupils and so we have three careers advisors based in that school so in terms of delivering that university a school with 4,000 pupils in it sorry two sorry two thousand so we have about 2.5 fft working in that space so we review that on an annual basis and we look at the population and the census data that comes through via CMIS and then we adjust our resources to ensure that we can deliver the targeted and universal support that we set out and so it will depend you we have some advisors maybe in rural areas who are there two or three days a week one day a week for example or we have a number of advisors but I think it's important to recognise that it's always a dedicated individual so it's the same person that's working in that school throughout the year and then on an annual basis and if your careers advisors are not based in schools where are they if they're not in the school for the whole week are they out and about in other schools or are they based in a central location then in the local authority area so generally speaking if I've taken the example that James gave those advisors are in school four and a half days a week each so they are more or less full time we do make time half a day per week to come back into the centre so they're linking back in with other staff they would attend staff meetings undertake cpd which is really really crucial for our expert advisors but in other areas it might be done differently so it may be they have a school case load and they may also work with unemployed young people as well so it's different in different jobs in different circumstances okay I just want to move on to look at subject choice with regard to gender segregation because the equality section of the developing young people workforce progress report made a specific reference to reducing gender stereotypes and segregation in course choice I'd be interested to hear about some of the work that's being done on that by education in scotland and by sds as well okay I'm happy to take that one we've done a lot of work on gender and it's again a feature a very strong feature in what we're asking in the career education standard from early years onwards so you know in an early learning and child care setting today we are asking staff in there and the people working with young people to think very heavily about the gender stereotyping that might be around the opportunities for play when they're playing or dressing up as somebody from work so that has carried through to we've just completed with sds and the institute of physics a very successful programme in Fife and other schools on improving gender balance and that the findings of that were launched and disseminated in June just before the summer and that really tackled a huge number of issues relating to gender across the piece that's been regarded as very successful practitioners teachers have found it very useful and we'll now go on and pick up on that work and as we move into the area of regional collaboratives emerging and we're hoping with a recent recruitment at the moment we're looking for improving gender balance staff who will help take that work forward across the country so we've learned a lot from that and and we can see progress involved in the delivery of the improving gender balance project and what that's taken is to the development of resources and so careers advisors particularly postgraduate qualified have an element of that's part of their learning and training and back to the point earlier on about challenging the choices that they're making in a positive way but that absolutely is about ensuring that the young person is making the right choice and that includes exploring gender segregation occupational segregation and the influences that are informing those choices at that point in time so we undertake CLPL or CPD for our staff we've developed that in conjunction with Education Scotland as well and then there's also a teacher's resource that's been developed to be aware of that and to understand where those specific challenges are existing which occupations so back to the labour market information which occupations which industries so that that can be raised with young people to see that they understand why that has happened and I back to again you know it's a cultural change but I think all of the influencers need to understand what that position looks like and we've got a certainly a role in supporting them with the information that we share with them yeah thank you for that I mean I think obviously certain schools are better at tackling gender segregation than others so I wonder therefore is there a role for Education Scotland in tackling that and actually in tracking course choices across the country in terms of gender and looking at what the national picture is and I wonder as well does Education Scotland provide any advice with regard to the gender composition of a class so for example if you have an advanced higher physics class in which there are 16 pupils and only one girl does any advice and guidance go out to schools in terms of how to challenge that and actually how to stop that kind of thing from arising in the first instance that is exactly the kind of work that the improving gender officers will be doing we've had a pilot for I think for two years with Institute of Chemistry, Institute of Physics part funded these posts along with SDS to look at this critical element really in advance of the STEM strategy being developed in there and that has proved to be very successful we've learned from some of the actions that were taken in schools just exactly how to help with this whole situation at last week's Scottish learning festival which the committee couldn't come to actually in there but on the Thursday we had a STEM day a whole day focused on STEM and there were three intriguing short presentations by young people in the morning and it's worth looking at them on the web actually where you saw the stark difference there was the last person that spoke was a young woman who left school possibly two years ago and didn't know what to do when she went to the school in terms of her future careers too this was pre enhanced career information didn't know what to do and she moved school as fortuitously in s5 and in her s6 her technology teacher opened her mind to what they called a multi-trade course in s6 and that she went out with the council workers two days a week and that really opened her mind to what she was doing she's now a second year apprentice plasterer etc in there and she knows that she did not receive the right information well the corollary to that was the first person spoke who was a primary seven pupil who um had become a science lab technician in her primary school and she had to apply she had to go through an interview and she was then leading others male male and females boys and girls in that school on science now that's an example really of of us you know seeing those early winds coming through it will take time but i think we're working on it from a whole range of angles and how will education scotland capture that good practice and share it then with other schools will it be done through the website or it's done in a whole number of ways i mean that all of that is captured on the the findings and the projects that went uh i mean you know your example of noticing that there's one girl in a class of x number of boys these are exactly the things that we're being worked with in in the schools concerned um and and all of that was you know i suppose made very very clear you know how a teacher speaks in a class who are they taking answers from you know are they responding to the boys first they'll respond to the girls first and does that you know vary across subject area and of course that's what was all in there as part of this work it was fascinating that's all available um it's certainly on the website but it's on the it's with we'll work with that material with these new gender officers across each of the weeks to to um to make sure that that's um everybody's aware of that and just finally the reason for placing them with the regional collaboratives is that education scotland are looking to have us to have a team of people around about literacy and numeracy health by being STEM and the gender that will then begin to take things much much more across the curriculum and to help all the teachers to understand the connections across just as john said every day learning and teaching without thinking about even you know the those careers we want more women in it's a natural becomes a natural part of learning and teaching and young people's expectations that the gender bias issues um are covered thank you thank you and we're moving on to the achieving the developing young workforce priorities i'm going to bring Mr Mindell thank you convener i'm i just wondered first of all um how well do you think that dyws achieving its aims across the country i'll start with that um i guess i would like to go back to a point that terryll anagon made and back in june it's part of this inquiry um that we are halfway through quite a significant change programme i think the key difference for me around dyws is the length of time that has been enabled in order to undertake and elicit that change in the system which is already changing you know the the world of work is consistently changing so the recommendations that we had back then are starting to be challenged with what the landscape is currently looking like for us um but certainly from our point of view there's no denying that there has been progress in this and it goes back to the point i made earlier on that we would expect um a level of progress or a pace of progress to be different at the front end of this change programme um than we would at the back end and i think a lot of the infrastructures now in place so the capacity building the the relationships those hub delivery models around defAs the employer school relationships um that gives us a real opportunity to work towards achieving what dyws set out for the whole seven year programme so um say i you know from our point of view the career education standard the recommendations around career information advice and guidance for young people broadly um and all the people who are involved in that um we are starting to see progress through the education scotland reviews of ciag services some great examples of you know whole local authorities um changing their entire curriculum structure having it running the same across the local authorities to ensure that those opportunities start existing for more young people they're building it and in times that means that the travel is not taken away from other parts you know and um there's a lot of learning that's been taken place as part of this change programme um and i think the progress that we're making um is also reflected in the kpi's that there's incremental um progress being made year on year against those um you know there's 39 recommendations from the original report and they then break down into something like 124 sub recommendations so and then across the the vastness of the programme um there's been a lot of interdependency and complexity um where i see is just beyond the mid point now is that um pretty well everything is lined up you know there was a point in time when um you couldn't push on one bit until another bit was in place for instance waiting for the dyw employer groups to get themselves up and running that's now in place so we're in an interesting place now where um from where i sit everything is in place and i think that the job now is is one of um pretty well relentless focus in delivering um the ambitions of the programme in the next two to three years um so you'd be absolutely confident that the targets are going to be met in by the end of the the funded period i am confident that we are going to see a change remember what we're looking for is system change that's that's a big ask it's system change that is sustainable this can't be seen as another initiative something like it has done in the past it can't be something that stops when the programme stops um so that's what we're gearing all our efforts towards and and we've already mentioned the significant culture change that we we're having to work on um to to ensure that that system change actually happens and is sustained beyond the life of the programme and you're you're confident that there's sufficient financial resource going to be available to ensure that that you know activity is sustainable right across the country i i probably don't have too much comment on the financial resource i'm probably not best place to to make a comment on that i think there are three strong indicators in in the the progress for me one is that relationships are now growing with the right partners that would include employers and the parents and everybody involved in this there's genuine collaboration it's not partnership it's genuine collaboration in there not just from the national agencies but in schools and within local authorities and there's shared expectations shared expectations from us whether it's about um the gender bias or the need for better careers information in school when option choice there's a clear understanding and shared expectations in there so relationships collaboration and expectations i think are really strong okay and the final question that i want to ask is slightly unrelated but do you think that there's too much focus on employers needs i've heard that mentioned a couple of times this morning and it's certainly a worry for me i think the dyw group in Dumfries and Galloway are doing a great job but ultimately a lot of the activity seems to be focused on supporting employers and young people to sort of match match them up locally rather than focusing on young people's potential what they may want to do and i have a concern when i hear you know that we're widening the option choice but within some of the option choices for bright young people who may become from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to pursue a traditional academic route actually the choices and the support available to them has got weaker or lost focus in order to support some other activities that we need to have a sharp eye on in ourselves and talking to young people in schools and in community learning settings is that you know they genuinely feel that the course and the course is there on the range of courses there on actually meets their own expectations and that's part of actually a young person and right from the earlier stages understanding what their what their career options might be so they're able to articulate these and talk about their skills at a much earlier stage be aware of them of them and talk about them so that they're well informed but also the teachers and parents are well informed but we certainly would not want a situation where young persons aspirations were bound by the need of a local employer would actually that young person could become something different and that's very very important it's about young persons needs as well as the the economy needs do you think that the current programme's got that balance right that's really what i'm asking because i mean i don't see i don't see middle class pupils who have these connections and imbilt advantages that they're not changing their mind as far as i can see away from university and wanting to to work in local businesses they're continuing on that path and what's happening is a lot of the initiatives end up targeting a group of bright people you know who maybe don't have the same advantages to whom things then appear an attractive option when they're not given the full support they deserve how do good that's an issue at at the moment and i think that's exact but there are the drivers are in place to to address that and i mentioned earlier they are the work of the science centre in reaching out working with families family learning that kind of things and that again needs to get itself embedded into the system but again the the drive is there for that i think we're acutely aware of that perception playing out so we're absolutely have that in mind that it's the children's needs first that's an absolute driver in everything we're doing absolutely if i could just say something on that point the work that joanne referenced earlier on about looking at what evidence exists at a school level to support their planning for their curriculum in the school and also through the kind of FE provision in the area the 16 plus data hub which is part of the opportunities for all tracking young people's outcomes and sds are heavily involved through identifying where those young people are if they're not in school and part of that is a huge amount of work that's been undertaken to support schools to input information into that about young people's status and destination but it also includes information about the preferred occupations and preferred routes so it gives us a chance to use that information a lot of the focus has been given that data is complete as it possibly can but we're already starting to see some emerging local authorities using that information to inform their curriculum planning for themselves and for the college so it's looking at the supply and demand and if they are mismatched in some way shape or form that has implications for all of us and i guess that that needs to be part of the evolution of DYW and how we use evidence and information to inform very targeted and specific improvement rather than at the front end of that which was broad infrastructure being built into the system so that that's certainly something that's on all of our horizons about how we use help schools to use that data more effectively. Mr MacDonald, thank you very much convener. I just want you to continue this conversation about employers. The vast majority of employers in Scotland are certainly in the private sector are SMEs, less than five employees. What support is out there to encourage employers to get involved in the programme? Yes, I can start that off. Again, it's important to recognise that SDS has a very specific role in that space working alongside the Scottish Enterprise and also the DYW groups in supporting employers so I can certainly talk about the support that we have available for them. So we work with and account manage a group of employers to understand what their business needs look like and there's a programme called Skills for Growth which enables employers to build their capacity to either explore or to undertake workforce development so we have a small team in SDS who works with those employers and part of that programme of understanding their needs and supporting them to improve or develop their organisation. It also includes what skills programmes are available to help them to do that. That would be the apprenticeship family in its entirety, so is that an employer that can become part of an FA delivery model or is it something that may be in modern apprenticeships would more support the succession planning requirements of those organisations? That's one aspect of that. We have sector teams, industry leadership groups, we also obviously have a Scottish apprenticeship advisory board who are influential in supporting employers to understand the range of activity that they can get involved in because I think a lot of what we've discussed today here is that awareness is the first point for anybody to make any change and if they aren't aware how do we expect them to do that. So it's raising the profile of learning and skills and the benefits to employers around what learning and skills pathways and programmes are available to support their organisations. In marketplace, which we've developed with the DYW groups, the implementation of that is in situ at the moment, so there are about seven or eight groups currently using that with a clear plan through the DYW LEED SG to implement that across all those groups. We developed the infrastructure around that with DYW and it's about promoting that to employers. Some of the comments that we hear is that employers don't know what to do to get involved with schools so marketplace tries to give them an idea of the different types of activities that they may be able to put themselves up for but absolutely if an employer requires further support beyond that in terms of not knowing what to do but wanting to get involved there are many routes that we can support them with in order to be able to do that. I mean your KPIs, KPIs 6, 10 and 11 is about increasing employability for young people, disabled people and for people from care backgrounds but you mentioned marketplace, marketplace, the current information we have has only 300 registered employers. Now putting public sector to one side, private sector has 363,000 so I mean it sounds to me as if it's a minute number and you know do we know what the make up of the marketplace employers? Is it predominantly large employers that are there or is it public sector employers? I mean who have registered the marketplace? So we have a mixture and we have an approach so national employers who have multiple offers across the country and we work either with ourselves and our teams or through Scottish Enterprise because many of these employers may be account managed in different ways across the entire landscape so it's helping them to understand how they can broaden that reach so there are some national employers that are part of that and then we move into the SME sector and the public sector so we support a public sector network so we have a public sector network that develops their approach to learning and skills and supporting young people and their choices as an employer absolutely. I don't have the exact breakdown of what those numbers look like at this stage it's certainly something that I could follow up and but it's important to note that we are only not even halfway through that but we're a third of the way through getting those groups engaged and as Joan referenced earlier on the timescales of having all those employer groups in place it should be about using the networks of the dywy employer groups to then interface into marketplace and we have an evolution that we can go through in terms of meeting their needs as part of that. I mean I appreciate it's a work in progress and you know we'll get further down the line as it's going on but the dywy original groups how much involvement of SMEs are in those dywy groups? I wouldn't be able to answer that right now for them. I don't think we have that data to hand yet. I think what's happening on the ground is that that's exactly what these groups are doing you know they're looking in the localities of schools and in the community surrounding schools and a lot of them are very busy engaging and making approaches to SMEs to see what's possible and again I can only be anecdotal at the moment. You know I've heard of situations where several SMEs it might be one to up to 10 employers have maybe grouped together and in that grouping they have offered to be either a mentor for a young person there's some good examples of that coming through that it might be an individual one to one that's one of the strengths sometimes that come through again that could be because of local knowledge or in the community so there's a variety of things coming through now our role in that is to first of all support culture change I mean one of the issues has been helping schools and employers to understand how to talk to each other you know that one isn't demanding of the other they have to enter into a mutually beneficial relationship and our role would be to advise government on if there's any particular blockages in that but again we're still in this interesting place where the development young workforce employer groups are getting in some cases up to speed and and we are seeing good work there we're seeing the context being made but yes so I wouldn't take marketplace as the only indication at the moment of what's going on the ground again it's the same story okay thanks very much okay I'm going to move on to inclusivity and support I've got a number of members wanting in on this so I'm mindful of times if people could be keep the questions succinct and answers succinct as well it would be helpful at this stage but can I bring in first Mary Fee? Thank you convener I wanted to ask the panel about care experienced young people because it's widely known that care experienced young people have poorer outcomes and the figures show that there's only been a two per less than a two percent increase in the number of care experienced young people reaching a positive destination since 2012 and it's recognised that quite often care experienced young people need intensive and personalised support so can I ask the panel what specific supports are available for care experienced young people? I think if I can start initially on that one the meeting the needs of care experienced young people is part of a much wider picture within the Scottish Government within the education agenda as you'd be aware through the excellence and equity through the pupil equity fund and so on so we need to look at this question through the lens of everything that's going on to help young people and to help every young person thrive from there the there's a lot of work going on with multi agency I would say across with education scotland and with others to look specifically at the needs of that group in there Joanne you've got some examples yeah I mean this this is a challenge this this whole area is a challenge because of the level of individual support that's needed and again I would reiterate what Alan said what what we're trying to focus on is the aspect from the dyw angle of what works what works for these young people when they are transitioning from one stage to another and in our case it's it's from whatever state in there into employment or into other further positive destinations so that's very much what what we're looking at and we are making progress but it's it's slow and steady progress you know it's it's purely incremental and it's working in that space that that Alan described there that we are learning from what works in the interventions from the Scottish team and challenge what's happening on the ground locally um I think some of give me an example that that comes to mind some of the committee and I'm not sure if all of the committee where present might have visited for instance Scran academy am I right in thinking that in in the north of Edinburgh and that that was a project very much set up in combination with at the time Craig Royston High School a teacher leading on that working with CLD in the local community and creating a pathway for a whole cohort of young people now that's an example of youngsters being motivated and supported through a route from fairly challenging circumstances that's the kind of thing that we're learning from we're drawing out what works and again sometimes that's passing on advice in terms of barriers to Scottish Government colleagues who are working in that area on policy but that's what we're working on capturing what works for care experienced young people without focus very much on what helps them develop the confidence and the skills in order to be able to progress beyond where they are pick up from a direct delivery service to to young people and so the targeted support that we mentioned earlier on that's been described as part of our submission and identifies the socioeconomic factors for young people so it uses those factors to allow the careers advisor and the practitioner who's supporting that young person whether it's past their own support or guidance to make an informed decision about the level of support that they would get and one of those socioeconomic factors that would identify a young person for our maximum level of support if you like is through care experience and that's care experience in any sense not just the kind of one-year definition that some of the statistics are reporting against so we're able to validate what that service level looks like for that young person based on their circumstances because it may be that they are a you know supported young person with clear career pathways in mind etc and so we're able to identify them through that and the enhanced offer on the back of the career education standard where we brought that enhanced support into s3 so we can start that validation and intensive support with a young person from an earlier age and we mustn't also forget that the post school services that we offer are effectively a continuum of the relationship that we have with young people from school and to post school for those that haven't moved into a positive destination so it's part of your corporate parenting plan because we were identified as an organisation who as a corporate parent and we extended the intensity of that ongoing support for young care experienced individuals up to their 26th birthday so that it creates quite a significant window of opportunity which absolutely it would be what a career intervention or career guidance support would look like that's not the entirety of it but what we do do is use our network to ensure that whoever's working with that young person or who needs to work with that young person we can bring them into that environment as part of their learning programme so there's a commitment there from a service delivery point of view and also through partnership to extend that okay so if the the assessment and needs is done correctly and you produce a needs matrix and and children are put at the heart of all of this if all of that is done correctly and you assess the needs of care experienced young people why is the percentage of care experienced young people achieving positive destinations only increased by less than 2% since 2012 well we can only play our part in that in terms of the services that we're delivering and it goes back to everything that we've talked about today about the broader support and the information advice and guidance for all young people and the influencers around their peer groups their parents and carers or lack of in many senses so we can certainly put any place the support mechanisms that we can deploy our resources towards and then build the capacity in the way that we've described today in order to understand how we support other people to do that one of the biggest challenges that we've outlined as part of our corporate payment plan is being able to have accurate and up-to-date data on all of those young people who are care experienced or have experienced care in any way shape or form so we're exploring how we get data sharing agreements or some way of identifying that at a local authority level which don't currently exist so there's many challenges that exist out there in terms of being able to provide the support but I guess certainly we can put as much into the support that we give young people and work with our partners to connect those pieces of support as best we can so if I go back to my original question which was what specific support is put in place for care experienced children and what you've described is a system of support that is available to all children that are identified that have a support need there is nothing specific that is targeted to care experienced children so sorry if I've not described that but what you've described is a system of support that you assess the need of a child and you put the support in place absolutely it's recognised that care experienced children have more challenges and need more support so the question I asked was what specific support do you put in place when you have identified a care experienced young person specifically what do you put in place to support that person in addition to supports that may be put in place for other children that have additional support needs so you're in hand our highest level of service or support and what does that look like go to those young people so that's an ongoing long-term relationship with that young person so in an example if we are validating that need on an ongoing basis we could work from primary sd with that young person all the way through until they leave school and then up to their 26th birthday so that extension of that service in the post-school setting is absolutely specific to our corporate parent plan and our commitment to care experienced young people our targeted support and the needs matrix that we use takes account of those care experienced young people and ensuring they get the support that they need so it is specific to those individuals it's not just what everybody else and do you have the resources available to deliver that because the figures would suggest that that you don't when there's less than a 2% increase in positive destinations well I guess it's not solely sds's responsibility to deliver an improvement for those young people it requires the whole system to change their mechanisms and undertake the support levels that they do so I can't comment on any of that we certainly deploy the resources that we have in the best way that we can to give the most support to those who need it okay thank you thank you doctor allen you wanted in thanks very much convener I was keen to ask about another group that's perhaps underrepresented tradition layer in the past in in the world of of work and that is young people with disabilities and I was keen to know what you as an organisation are able to do to try to improve the figures around that and also to provide support specifically to young people who are thinking about their career options young people with disabilities sure so from an sds point of view again as I've just described that needs-based approach would identify any disability or health condition that a young person may have as a factor that may indicate that they require a greater level of support so we'd apply the same principles around individualised support and I think that the service we deliver from a career information advice and guidance point of view is for the individual so the system that we have around about that gives us a way of working with that young person and allocating a level of service that meets their needs so that is done on an individual basis absolutely the same ways I've described for care experience young people and you've already made the point that it's not up to yourselves to fix all problems in society and appreciate that point but do you as organisations work with employers where perhaps instinctively you might think the primary barrier exists towards young people with disabilities giving what do you do to try and overcome some of those perceptions so we have we deliver the modern apprenticeship programme for example so there's enhanced funding for employers and young people who have disabilities and additional support needs in order to be able to put that support into place to sustain them through that programme for up to 52 weeks and so there is additional support there and we do a lot of work with employers so one of the most recent pieces then is about recruitment guides so how do we support employers to be fully inclusive and open around and be aware of the different aspects that may play into the recruitment practices and the selection processes and to make them more fair and more open and so there are there is different pieces of work that we do with employers and orderly support them to bring young disabled people into their organisation and support them effectively while they're there because it does require a level of support that they may not experience all the time but are anybody able to say anything about what might be done to overcome conscious or unconscious bias on the part of employers which is something obviously that disabled people themselves cite as what they perceive as one of the obstacles to work again i think that's something we're very aware of as we're working with the dyw employer groups it's to and that was one of the issues for instance getting one of the things we looked at early on was getting work placements for young people with disabilities and the definition of young people with disabilities of cautious variation in it vast variation in it and and that's something you have to unpack almost continuously and I see cautiously you know that some people rate some disabilities in different ways you know so there's a huge complexity sitting within if you want that very wide grouping of young people and so again what we've sought to do as an organisation is to help people that we can influence and work with to understand first of all that they're not capping the limit that's a huge thing on a young person who's perceived or actually has a disability and that that isn't stopping you know at this for instance at the school level the school saying well you can't because for instance undertake a work placement and the other side of that obviously is having a situation in which that young person can flourish that there is an employer willing to offer that young person a work placement so that's exactly where we are just now working on the all the again the cultural and attitudinal things that we need to do as well as putting you know what's the exact level of support that needs to go into place we've learned a lot from the number of organisations who are in in the field here one of these was obviously quoted in the original commission report and that's Enable who have had a high degree of success across 11 or so authorities working with young people with disabilities they have a very high success rate in getting them into positive destinations so we've captured the learning from that and are working with a number of other areas a number third sector and active organisations are able to support young people in in that situation and finally in just another point i wanted to make around it you've phrased it yourself there about work placements anecdotally tell me if i'm wrong but anecdotally one of the problems in the past about encouraging more work placements for everyone and work experience for everyone has been sometimes the attitudes of employers around issues like insurance and presumably there are all sorts of misconceptions to be overcome when it comes to insurance for people with with disabilities on on work experience and what's being done specifically to try and overcome some of those anxieties in the part of employers to make sure that people with disabilities get the same opportunities as everyone else again that's exactly it there's a number of issues like that health and safety issues for instance we discovered that on the west coast there was a completely different set of rules about allowing young children into maritime type work placements compared with east coast you know there's all sorts of interesting anomalies have been thrown up as we've worked our way through all of this and so what you know what calmac would allow on one side pno wouldn't allow on the other side and so on so there's all sorts of interesting problems so we just have to take them on a you know almost a case by case basis to understand where the bloggers sit so it takes us into very interesting territory but that's ongoing yeah I'm very aware of that thank you can be up thank you i've got two members still waiting to come in this if they could be um so I think that would be really helpful I can ask Joanne Lamont thanks it's really to follow on from those issues I'm interested in first of all the level of training you have in relation to dealing with different additional support needs so for example last night I was at a launch of a report called not included not engaged not involved with scotsia autism nationalistic society in children's scotland they produced very worrying evidence about the extent to which young people are excluded from school either informally or formally or in part time timetables and therefore not secure in education I wonder how you factor in an understanding of that to the support that you would give to a young person with autism because I think there would be lessons from that for other things that exclude people but this is a good example of young person who may not be in school regularly maybe because of the circumstances are not supported to stay in school what do you do to make sure that their opportunities to access proper careers advice is there if you want yeah so that I think we do that through a number of different approaches the one that you've touched on I think is absolutely crucial which is partnership working so using specialist agencies and people with expertise we don't expect our frontline careers advisers to have that kind of knowledge and expertise but they need to know how to access that in order to put together a package of support for a young person so what we'd also do is work really closely with our schools who that kind of in-depth knowledge of young people and you're right to say that some young people are not in that school setting so we have staff who are able to go and do that kind of intermediary role and provide support if a young person isn't able to come to us to access it which can be really important for a young person and it comes back to some points we made earlier as well about changing perceptions in terms of employers and how we would hope to try and make sure that we have a package of support around that young person that's based on the reality of the opportunities that are there but always been aspirational for that young person and in particular paying attention to their personal needs and their own aspirations and their own desires and trying wherever we can to make sure that the information advice and guidance that we give to them is in line with that and building their own capacities so that they are successful in their transitions that they sustain those and that is a long-term future for that young person. We also do invest a lot in CPD for our own staff using other agencies so we've worked with, we haven't touched on mental health today but that's one of the issues that's been really prevalent I guess in terms of the work that we do and making sure that our staff are fully aware of all the resources that are available to young people so that they can bring those to bear. Another important thing maybe just to mention finally is just around the work we do with parents so it's taken that family-based approach and making sure that they're involved in every stage that we're making the support availability of people. This report regularly having to battle with a system that's finding difficult to manage their young person and there are actually very simple things that could be done to support them but how do you monitor access to careers advice by a young person who may be in and out of the system? Whose responsibility, you talked about face to face in one to one, whose responsibility is to track and the example of a child with autism is a good one but there will be others that that child is having access or is simple because in their absence nobody's sort of trace tracking that down to make sure they get that advice and support. So I guess in schools what we find as a network used to be classed as opportunities for all co-ordinators or groups that may be now be classed as dyw groups but whatever environment whatever name they're giving themselves there is a very close-knit environment in schools that focuses on those young people who are not engaging with either services or in school generally. SDS careers advisors are certainly part of that with pastoral guidance staff etc. Our careers advisors play quite a pivotal role in delivery of the opportunities for all commitment for 16 to 19 year olds so even beyond school we retain those networks so we use either local employability partnerships or local authority groups in order to work with the different partners that are around using the data from the shared data set where we know young people are either unconfirmed or unknown and agreeing a plan of action about how we find those young people if we're being quite blunt about it I mean there is absolutely an ownership of that through the partnership for opportunities for all that do that and in a school setting and the different partners identifying who might be working with that young person and can we do something differently you know we've many examples of careers advisors engaging with non-attenders outside of school at the agreement of that group because they feel that the relationship that they have because it's impartial from a career information advice and guidance professional is better to try and facilitate the return back into school and many occasions we've seen that as well so there's a kind of group ownership around that and I guess in post school setting if they're not in a school setting certainly as a lead partner in opportunities for all we are responsible for understanding where the young people are. I mean non-attenders are a very generic group because we can not attend them for all sorts of reasons including the fact that the school's informally excluded them but I wondered whether and last question is do you have specific training with people who engage with careers around specific conditions so like developmental needs of a young person with autism would you have that specific training which you understand actually is not simply a non-attender but even if you want to engage them you'll need to engage in a particular way. The professional capacity of career information advice and guidance staff is to either provide that support or know who does provide that support we've got a huge commitment to equalities at SDS we have a network of equality champions and advisers who develop and understand what works in different areas so it cuts right across the 1600 people that are employed by SDS across the whole of Scotland those equality groups are then bringing together what training they've attended and what partnership work has worked for them and to be able to support that and identifying how we can provide some capacity building for our partners around the work that we do and also how they do that as well so there is absolutely a formal training programme in place which takes additional support needs broadly and then locally we use our partners to support practitioners and the development of their skills on an ongoing basis because we too have a commitment to 21 hours CPD for our staff. Ms Mackay. Yes really just following on from that line of questioning that does your data tell you how many children who require the highest level of support including care experience children how many of them are falling through the net how many you don't catch. So just how many we don't catch specifically is how many don't access. Is there data to say that that child should have received additional support but they haven't? Yeah so we've got quite a robust performance monitoring framework in place at SDS particularly focused around the delivery of CIAG services so at each of those interventions in each year group and each cohort in a targeted group we have an expectation around what support they're going to receive and we monitor that on a month by month basis so advisors have access to that through our customer management system so they know who is it that I've still to see who's not been there who's not been there for the last four weeks great examples of working with schools as well to share that information so we began to provide that information not just to the teaching staff but also formally to head teachers and directors of education so that there is a strategic buy-in it goes back to the point Joan made earlier on about the awareness of all the services that exist in the school land and the local authority and so we feel that sharing that information is actually going to improve access to the support if young people are not getting it and it allows us to be really honest about why they're not getting it so if they are in school and they're not being let out of class for example is there a way that we can negotiate when we see them differently in order to be able to do that so it becomes a planning tool for us in supporting young people do you put a figure on it to tell us today how many are not receiving the support so the statistics that we put out said that we've engaged with 92 percent of population in broad general education so there is 8 percent in there that has not have not accessed any services from s1 to s3 that could be for a number of reasons it could be that they weren't in at all in school non-attenders it could be that they were absent during the period of time that we had planned to deliver those engagements and we do the best will in the world to follow that up with them and that may be through maybe a one-to-one support rather than trying to manifest a group session with them so we do have a mechanism for being able to respond to that and it takes account of the conditions that are existing in schools when you've got 8 to 10 percent absent rates happening as well so it becomes quite a significant planning piece for you know sharing at a strategic level and also advisors with school staff okay thanks okay thank you um final question um i as close to a yes and no answer as you can have um there has been a lot of discussion about the challenges and the scale of what's been asked in terms of culture change and all these kind of things um and we're constantly hearing about the change in um the demands of workforces the fourth industrial revolution coming in things like that so um i just want to ask the general question about the governance that's in place is is it adequate to deliver what delivering the young workforce was supposed to do and also whether it's flexible enough to react to changes and respond to the learner journey review for instance to um you mentioned their dbyw and learner journey are absolutely in harness from there and actually the um the learner journey and dbyw together would actually form the the full articulation of curriculum for excellence up to 18 from that point of view but then to actually smooth smooth those pathways and roots and support into college university employment or whatever and to look after that that our young people up to the the age of 25 i think um are essential now the the governance for learner journey is just beginning to start in there and education scotton will be more than actively involved in that i'm sure sds too um and we are making sure internally it matches without developing your workforce but the expectations coming from the programme for learner journey are exactly the same in there so yes it's it's more than adequate it's quite a pertinent point so the change team leads across each of the dbyw themes are already considering the progress that's been made and the learning that we've taken from the first half of that programme and we understand that the there are ways that we could probably increase the scale and pace of the activity with a different governance structure so that's something that we are considering with scottish government and the other change team leads about how do we build on what we know now works and how do we be much more targeted in our activity and our interventions and in our support and i think just to reiterate the point that alan's made the emergence of the learner journey recommendations a great word that alan uses is that it provides some impetus to the work that we're doing in dbyw but it also provides a very specific focus in areas which requires a different level of action and that's very clear for us to to respond to thank you very much can i thank both skills development scotland and education scotland for their attendance this morning and the contribution i'm going to suspend just for a few moments to let the panel leave the room we're moving on to agenda item two thank you um we're considering the responses that the committee has received to report in the query into poverty and attainment and achievement of school at each children we've received responses from the scottish government cause that and from education scotland and there are some responses specific to the committee recommendations that include the government highlighting its work towards a new measurement of deprivation based on social background and invite members views and responses as how they want to take this forward i thought it was very encouraging actually to hear that there will be a review of that because i think the evidence that we're getting from various quarters is that it's not really satisfactory just now so i was encouraged by that are we content to know the responses and with a view to maybe come back to this when there's further information rather than the link thank you very much thank you um we now move on to agenda item three which brings us into private session